Welcome to Reign of Grace. This
program is brought to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries,
an outreach ministry of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany,
Georgia. It is our pleasure and privilege
to present to you the gospel message of the sovereign grace
and glory of God in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that today's program
will be a blessing to you. Thank you for listening and now
for today's program. Welcome to our program today.
I'm so glad you could join us and I hope that you will listen
intently and prayerfully and follow along in the scriptures,
which I'll be preaching from Galatians chapter three, beginning
around verse 15, Galatians chapter three, verse 15. And I have two
messages that I want to preach to you entitled, The Seed of
Abraham. The Seed of Abraham. This is
part one, and next week will be part two. The Seed of Abraham. Now, when it comes to the law,
when you read the Bible and you hear the word law, most people
think of the Ten Commandments, or the Old Covenant Law of Moses,
and many times, especially here in the book of Galatians, that's
what the law is referring to. If you've read the book of Galatians
or studied it, you know that the Apostle Paul was inspired
to write to the Galatian believers, the Galatian church or churches.
Some say there were more than one church in this region, which
was in Asia Minor. that the Apostle Paul was inspired
by the Spirit to write to these people concerning a heresy which
crept into the churches by legalistic Jewish unbelievers who claimed
to be Christian, who claimed to be saved by grace. But what
they wanted to do was bring Gentile believers under the law of Moses,
the law of circumcision, and the law of Moses, the law of
ceremony. The Apostle Paul said that will
not do. That's another gospel he said.
He said if they come preaching another gospel, let them be anathema,
accursed. You see, when it comes to salvation,
when it comes to a right relationship with God, when it comes to being
justified before God, that is being declared not guilty, being
declared righteous before God, when it comes to righteousness,
Christ is all. And nothing else. There's nothing
else. If you add anything to Christ,
your physical heritage, your ceremonies, your works, your
baptism, your circumcision, your law-keeping, if you add anything
to Christ, you deny Christ. And Paul wrote that over in Galatians
chapter 5. When he was talking about, he
says in verse two of Galatians five, listen to this. He said,
behold, I Paul saying to you that if you be circumcised, Christ
shall profit you nothing. What's he talking about? He's
talking about if you submit to the law of circumcision in order
to be saved or in order to be holy or in order to be more righteous,
then Christ will profit you nothing. He goes on in verse 3, For I
testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a
debtor to do the whole law. Verse 4, Christ is become of
no effect unto you, whosoever you have justified by the law,
you have fallen from grace. It means you're denying grace.
You see, Christ and Him alone is my whole salvation as far
as the ground of attaining and maintaining salvation. I have
no righteousness but Him. The works of believers are the
work of God by the Spirit through them, which are the fruit, not
the cause, not the effect, not the ground, but the fruit of
salvation. You understand that? And people
are so confused about that. So my law keeping cannot save
me, cannot make me righteous before God. And that was the
theme of the book of Galatians, Christ is all. He's all my wisdom,
all my righteousness, all my redemption, all my sanctification.
So many people would ask this question, well then why did God
even give the old covenant law? If we can't be saved, if the
Jews under the old covenant could not be saved, by keeping the
Ten Commandments and going through all the ceremonies and the civil
laws and all of that, why did God give it? Well, He gave it
to show them their sin. And the impossibility of being
saved by, you know, by a person who claims to keep the Ten Commandments,
they're just lying to themselves. Because not only does the Ten
Commandments, do they forbid sinful acts but it also forbids
sinful thoughts. One of the commandments is thou
shalt not covet. Covetousness is not a sin of
action, it's a sin of the heart. And Christ taught that in Matthew
chapter five about, you know, when you think it in the heart,
it's sin. So the law was given, we're gonna
see that here in just a moment. It was given to expose their
sinfulness and their need of salvation by grace. But look
at how Paul puts it here in Galatians three in verse 15. He says, brethren,
I speak after the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant,
yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth or addeth thereto. When, let's say, two men or two
women make a covenant, an agreement, a signed document, for example,
you can't add to it or take away from it. You see, it's set in
stone. That's what he's saying. So here
he's talking about a covenant, made with Abraham. Look at verse
16. Now to Abraham and his seed were
the promises made. Now what's Paul talking about?
Well, let me just go back and give you some truth here from
the Bible about Abraham and his seed. That's the title of this
message and next week, the seed of Abraham. And I wanna show
you who Paul is talking about here. Now Abraham, if you studied
Abraham, Abraham had different, various descendants, offspring,
what we call the seed of Abraham. When the Bible talks about the
seed, it's talking about an offspring, a child, a descendant. Back in Genesis 3.15, it speaks
of the seed of woman. Well, who's that? That's Christ,
the God man. That's a prophecy of the Messiah
who was to come. And it's talking about his humanity.
He is God in human flesh. He was made of the seed of David,
according to the flesh, which means his humanity came through
the royal line of David. And he was born a human being
without sin. And that's the key. He didn't
have any sin. Like we're born dead in trespasses
and we fell in Adam. Christ didn't fall in Adam. We're
born dead in trespasses and sins. That is the void of spiritual
life. Christ was not born dead in trespasses and sin. And the
evidence of that is we all sin. Christ never sinned. So he's
the God man. But Abraham had other sins. For
example, he had a child with a bond woman, an Egyptian bond
woman named Hagar. That child's name was Ishmael.
Ishmael was Abraham's seed, child, descendant. And the Bible calls
him that. And Ishmael is the father of
the Arabs, the Arab nations. That's why the Arabs claim Abraham
as their father. But that was just a physical,
natural relationship. In and of itself had nothing
to do with spiritual things or spiritual promises. Well, Abraham
later on, he and Sarah, his wife, when they were both close to
a hundred years old, miraculously, by the power of God, had another
child named Isaac. And Isaac was the child of promise.
And it was through Isaac that the Messiah would come according
to the flesh. It was through the line of Isaac.
From Isaac came the Jews. And it was through them that
Christ came according to the flesh. And of course, Matthew,
in Matthew 1, 1, when he begins his genealogy of the humanity
of Christ, he starts off the seed of David, the seed of Abraham.
That's tracing his line. Now again, he wasn't born of
man in sin like we are. He was the seed of woman, born
without sin. But Abraham had Isaac. And Isaac
is called the child of promise because it was through his line
that the promised Messiah would come. Well, is that it for Abraham? No, Paul's gonna show us here
as he has before about another seed of actually one person and
then a group of people who are related to that one person. But
now when he mentions here in verse 15 promises, God promised
Abraham a lot of things. Some of the promises God made
to Abraham were physical, temporary, earthly, and only to be realized
through his physical line through Isaac, the Jews, and that only
lasted about 1500 years from Sinai to the cross. God made
the promise to Abraham 400 and some years before he brought
the nation Israel together at Sinai, delivered them out of
Egypt, but he had given them promised physical blessings based
upon their obedience. And one of the main ones was
the promise of that land, the promised land, land of milk and
honey. But Abraham also was given spiritual
promises that did not apply to the physical nation of Israel,
but to a spiritual nation God's chosen people, God's elect out
of every tribe, kindred, tongue, and nation, which included Gentiles. Back in verse 14, when he talks
about the redemption that's in Christ, he says, Christ redeemed
his people, verse 14, that the blessing of Abraham might come
on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. And who is that to? Who are the recipients of the
spiritual, eternal promises that God gave Abraham? Well, it's
believers. All who believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ, Jew and Gentile. And that's the nation of spiritual
Israel. But let's go back to verse 16 now. He says in Galatians
3.16, There's a covenant made set in stone now to Abraham and
his seed where the promise is made. What promises is Paul talking
about here? He's talking about the spiritual
promises of salvation, eternal life. The spiritual promises
of justification, sanctification. regeneration, conversion, the
blessings of salvation that come by God's grace to His chosen
people, Jew and Gentile, through the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1, 3, blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places
in Christ. How do you know that? Look back at verse 16. Now to
Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not,
and to seeds as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which
is Christ. Christ is the seed of Abraham. That's who he's talking about.
Now how is Christ the seed of Abraham? That is speaking of the humanity
of Christ, the human body and soul, which was born of the seed
of Abraham, of the seed of David, of the Jews, according to the
flesh. You see, Christ had to have a
human body. Why? Because he, as God, man,
must die on the cross to redeem his people, to save his people,
to satisfy God's justice, to bring forth everlasting righteousness. He had to be man. He's God and
man in one person. And so he's called the seed of
Abraham. You know, he's also called the
seed of David that I mentioned. You remember in Matthew chapter
22, when various religious and civil factions of unbelievers
were trying to trap the Lord to catch him by asking him some
useless questions, and he put him down in every way. He's wisdom
incarnate. At the end of all that, he asked
them a question. He said, what think ye of Christ?
What think ye of the Messiah? Whose son is he? Well, they spoke
among themselves and they come up with this answer. He's David's
son. Now they were right. According
to the flesh, he's made of the seed of David, which connects
him with Abraham too, seed of Abraham. But then he went on
to say, well, then how then did David call him Lord? If he's David's son, if he's
David's offspring, how could David call him Lord and worship
him? How could he be both David's son and David's God? They didn't know how to answer
him. And they didn't ask him any more questions, but he gives
us the answer. This person, who is the Savior
of God's chosen people, is both God and man in one person. And in that sense, this is what
Paul's saying. He is the seed of Abraham. And
look at verse 17. He says, And this I say, that
the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the
law which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul
that it should make the promise of none effect. Now what covenant
is he speaking of that was confirmed, set in stone, which means it
cannot be changed, before of God in Christ? What covenant
was 400, 430 years before the Law, which was the Law of Moses
on Sinai? It was the covenant God made
with Abraham to send Christ, the Messiah, into the world to
be the Savior of His people. to establish righteousness. Now
God gave the law to Israel, to the Hebrew children through Moses
on Sinai, 430 years after God made that promise to Abraham
recorded in Genesis chapter 12. So what Paul's saying is here,
the giving of the law on Sinai did not cancel out the promise
that God had already made to Abraham. All right? Understand that. That the law
on Sinai did not make the promise that God gave to Abraham of none
effect. Verse 18, for if the inheritance,
now what's the inheritance? That's salvation. That's a sinner
saved by grace. Peter called it an incorruptible
inheritance that cannot fade away. That's what a sinner saved
by grace has in Christ. In Christ I am saved to the uttermost. Cannot lose it. In Christ I am
righteous before God. As His righteousness imputed
to me, cannot be tainted, cannot be contaminated. And so he says,
for if the inheritance be of the law, in other words, if God
saves sinners by the law, it is no more of promise. That is,
salvation is no more of promise. If you could get the inheritance,
and you know an inheritance is something you don't work for,
Somebody else works for it and bequeaths it to you and you receive
it upon their death. Well, that's what God did in
Christ. He bequeathed the inheritance of salvation and all of its blessings
to his chosen people based upon the death of Christ. Okay? Now if that inheritance could
be obtained by the law, the law of Moses, keeping the law of
Moses, Then he says, it's no more promise. It's not a promise
of grace. In other words, it's debt, something
you work for, you earned it. He says, but God gave it to Abraham
by promise. Salvation through the seed of
Abraham, Christ, was given to Abraham, not based upon Abraham's
works or goodness or even Abraham's decision. Somebody said, well,
Abraham made a decision for Christ. Well, he did, but that's not
the basis of the promise. That's not what kicked it into
effect. What did? The death of Christ.
And God looked down through time. He did. And he knew that that
was going to happen because he determined it. He ordained it.
He predestinated it. What the scripture says, I know
people don't like that word today, but I'm sorry. It's a biblical
word. I had a fella call me up one
time, he said, I don't believe in that predestination. I said,
oh, you don't believe the Bible. Oh, I believe the Bible, he said.
Well, where do you think the word came from? I didn't invent
it. Webster didn't invent it. It's
in the Bible. He said, well, God just predestinated
events. Well, that's not what the Bible
teaches. Bible talks about His people being predestinated to
be conformed to the image of His Son, the image of Christ.
God doesn't conform events to the image of Christ. He conforms
people to the image of Christ. And that's His chosen people,
redeemed by the blood, justified in His righteousness. You say,
well, if that's the case, why preach? I'll tell you why I preach.
Number one, God says to. And number two, that's how God
saves His people. his children through the preaching
of the gospel, the power of the Holy Spirit. God gave it to Abraham
by promise. Well, verse 19, wherefore then
serveth the law. Why did God give the law then?
Why did he give the law? If God already promised to save
sinners by grace through Christ, and it's impossible to be saved
by the law, keeping the law, then why did God give it? Here's
your answer now. Verse 19, it was added because
of transgressions. And he says, till the seed should
come, till Christ should come to whom the promise was made,
all the promises of God in Christ are yea and in him, amen. And
it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. It was
given because of transgressions. The law was given as a mirror,
as it were, to show man his depravity, his sinfulness, his need of salvation
by promise, by Christ. And verse 20 says, now a mediator
is not a mediator one, but God is one. Verse 21, is the law
then against the promises of God? God forbid. For if there had been a law given,
which could have given life, verily righteousness should have
been by the law. The law is not in opposition
to the promise. Why? Because the law was never
given to Israel in order for them to attain or maintain salvation
by their works. The law was given, it'd be like
this. If you go to a doctor and say
you've got a pain, And you go to a doctor, and he said, I'm
gonna x-ray you, and I'm gonna find out where that pain's coming
from. And I hope and pray there's a cure. So he x-rays you, and
he finds you have a problem there, but he's got the cure. Now, how
did he know you've got the problem? The x-ray showed it. But he's
got the cure. Now, is the x-ray against the
cure? No, the x-ray couldn't cure you,
could it? The Jews, when they were under
the law, the unbelieving Jews, they looked to the law to cure
them, to cure the problem of sin, to make them righteous.
Now they are against the promise, but the law wasn't. The law wasn't
given for that reason. Just like an x-ray is not against
the cure. The x-ray exposes the problem, and then the cure comes
along by the doctor. Well, the law exposes the problem.
I'm a sinner. You're a sinner. The gospel brings
the cure. Christ redeemed us from the curse
of the law, his people. So he says, if there was a law
that could have given life, then righteousness would have been
by the law. But look at verse 22. But the scripture, the word
of God, hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith
of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. Did you
see that? The scripture, God's word, tells
us all who fell in Adam, all who are born in sin, all who
have sinned, that there's none righteous, no, not one. We don't
have a righteousness that answers the demands of God's law and
justice. There's none that doeth good. There's none that seeketh
after God. By deeds of law shall no flesh
be justified. Now why does it do that? To leave
us in despair? Man, if left to himself when
he hears those things, you know what he tries to do? He tries
to devise his own way of salvation. And it always involves the works
and the wills of men. It's called the way that leads
unto death. It's the broad road that leads
to destruction. It's the way of Cain. But the
scripture has concluded all understand that the promise by faith of
Jesus Christ, that's Christ faithfulness, not yours or mine, to do what
he promised to do in the covenant of grace before time began. Christ
promised in that everlasting covenant to fulfill all the conditions
of the salvation of his people. He promised to come and die and
pay their sin debt in full. He promised to become incarnate,
live a perfect life as God-man, go to the cross, suffer, bleed,
and die, that he might establish righteousness for his people,
which God had imputed to his people, whereupon he was raised
from the dead, and he ascended unto glory, And he promised to
give that salvation to as many as the father had given him.
John 6, 37, all that the father giveth me shall come to me. Him that cometh to me, I will
in no wise cast out. This is the will of him that
sent me that of all which he had given me, I should lose nothing,
but raise it up again at the last day. That's what he promised.
And he's faithful. to all his promises. And his
faithfulness includes the gift that's given to all who believe,
including their belief. For by grace are you saved, through
faith, that not of yourself, it's the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. That's the promise. That's the
seed of, Christ is the seed of Abraham. Now, we're going to
find out next week, as we go through this passage, that all
believers, sinners saved by grace, justified based on his righteousness
imputed, all for whom he lived and died, was buried and raised
again, all whose sins were charged, imputed, accounted to him, he
was made a curse for them, all of them, are the seed of Abraham
in Christ as evidenced by their belief in him. Do you have faith
in Christ? And we'll talk about several
aspects of the seed of Abraham there, because that's who the
people of God are. Now that doesn't mean that Abraham
created us, but it means spiritually speaking, we're lined up with
Abraham Through Christ, by the grace of God, and it's all according
to His righteousness imputed, He redeemed His people with the
price of His own blood. Hope you'll join us next week
for another message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
a copy of today's program or to learn more about Reign of
Grace Media Ministries or Eager Avenue Grace Church, write us
at 1102 Eager Drive, Albany, Georgia, 31707. contact us by phone at 229-432-6969
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today and may the Lord be with you.