Galatians chapter 3 and verse
15. 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. Now to Abraham and his seed were
the promises made. He saith not unto seeds, as of
many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. And this
I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before of God in
Christ, the law, which was 430 years after, cannot disannul,
that it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance
be of the law, it is no more of promise, but God gave it to
Abraham by promise. Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions,
till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. And
it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a
mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. 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. But the scripture hath concluded
all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might
be given to them that believe. But before faith came, we were
kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards
be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster,
to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come,
we are no longer under a schoolmaster, for ye are all the children of
God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been
baptised into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew
nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be
Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed and heirs according to the
promise. Amen. May God be pleased to bless
to us this reading from his word. I think the Lord Jesus Christ
has granted us some blessed thoughts in the passage before us this
morning. lessons that, if we can learn
them, will strengthen and confirm, will help and encourage our faith
and our comfort in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his gospel of free
and sovereign grace. But before I come to Paul's arguments
in particular, in the context of the studies that we have been
going through in this book of Galatians. I want to draw your
attention to the first word of verse 15, where the apostle says,
brethren. And I want you to notice that
the apostle here has used this word shortly after having called
these people foolish Galatians. Anyone hearing the opening of
this chapter might be able to think that Paul is angry at these
people. or that he is condemning of them,
that he's about to beat them up and hammer them down and throw
them around. But in reality, what the apostle
is doing here is speaking to those that he loves. those that
he cares for and whose affection is driving him as a brother in
Christ to seek their well-being and their happiness in a proper
understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. as one who had
affection for them. He says, brethren, we're in this
together, we are united together in these matters, and he wants
to show them. the truth as it is found in Christ,
to restate, to rehearse amongst them those things that he had
previously taught them and yet which they had been distracted
from by the teaching of others that had come amongst them to
do them damage and to do them harm. And we talk properly, rightly
about brothers and sisters in the Lord, brothers and sisters
in Christ, because all who are God's children by adoption into
his family are become our brothers and sisters in the Lord. And I dare say that many of us
have discovered that there is a stronger bond of spiritual
brotherhood and sisterhood in the family of God than even in
our natural relations in this world. We are of a family, the
family of God. And that filial relationship
that we have is with Christ and with each other. In Hebrews chapter
two, verse 11, we read these words. For both he that sanctifieth
and they who are sanctified, that is our God and his people,
are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them
brethren. The Lord God, Our blessed Saviour,
Jesus Christ, calls us his brothers and sisters. God calls us his
brothers and sisters. Could we get our head around
that, do you think, this morning? Could we grasp what that is saying? That the God who created all
things, that the God who is eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, has
so stooped to our level as to gather us up, as to pick us up,
as to gather us to himself and say to us, you are my brother,
you are my sister. Now, we ought not to be ashamed
to call him our brother, if he is not ashamed to call us his
brother. You have, do you not, a familiarity
with a brother that you cannot share with a stranger. You go
to a brother, we hear it, do we not? We say, oh, something
that you need. My brother's got one of those.
I'll pick it up for you. or I know where I can get those,
I'll speak to my brother about it. And that is a familiarity
that we ought to have with the Lord Jesus Christ also. These
are the blessings which the Lord has given us. He calls us our
brother, and while we rightly have a sense of the awesomeness
of God, of the majesty of God, of the glory of God, of the kingship
of God, of the sovereignty of God, and think of ourselves as
weak and puny and insignificant in the light of his majesty. Yet he says, you're my brother.
I'm the brother of a king and I ought to be at ease in the
presence of my brother. I ought to have confidence in
the presence of my brother. I go to my brother's house and
I make appeal for those things which are needful. So here's
just a little aside this morning before we think about what Paul
has to say, that we have a brother in Christ and he calls us to
approach him as brethren and bring our needs unto him. What do we say about this passage?
and Paul's argument to the Galatians. He is speaking to them as brethren. He is endeavouring to show them
the love and affection that he has for them as he directs them
and redirects them back to the truth that they have seemingly
forgotten. Let me ask a question. Do all
churches preach the gospel? Do all churches preach the gospel?
Do all churches speak the truth? I mean, don't all churches speak
about Jesus? Don't all churches tell us what
we should be doing and what we should be believing and how we
are to live and engage in lots of good activities, religious
activities? Is this not the way that men
and women are directed to deal with the problem of their sins
so that they might get to heaven? Isn't that why people go to church? Does it matter which church they
go to? For most people, going to church
is a kind of insurance policy. You cover your car, you cover
your house, you cover your life. You cover your soul. Well, no. The truth is that not
all churches preach the gospel. In fact, Paul's reason for writing
to the Galatians as empathetically, as sympathetically, and yet as
forcefully as he does, is to correct them because they were
no longer preaching the gospel of God. They were no longer preaching
the gospel of grace and peace. Now they knew the true gospel
because he calls them brethren, they're brothers and sisters
in the Lord. And Paul is able to call them
brethren, but their church was no longer preaching the truth. I'm going to ask another question. Had you gone to one of these
Galatian churches, would you have noticed the difference? What if the language is the same
and the hymns are the same and the practices are the same? What
if the prayers are the same and the way in which the Bible is
read and used is the same? What if all these things are
the same? Can you tell the difference between that which Paul had preached
and that which he subsequently discovered was being preached
amongst these Galatians. Can you distinguish between the
law and the gospel? Do you know the difference between
the law and the gospel? Do you know the difference between
works and grace? We reminded ourselves last week
that these people, these people were attacking Paul's gospel. They were attacking the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had come down from Jerusalem.
We call them Judaizers because they were trying to bring the
Old Testament Jewish faith back into the experience of these
New Testament believers, these Gentile believers in churches
that the apostles had formed and established throughout that
Mediterranean area. And these Judaizers had came,
and they came with attractive arguments. I mean, it wasn't
that they came and said, he said this, we say this, here's the
contradiction, follow us here. They were coming with arguments
that were subtle and attractive. They said, you know, what Paul's
told you is true, but it's not the whole story. They would say,
why is it that you would want to deny the traditions that have
served our fathers for so many hundreds of years? And they would
say things like, you'll enjoy the worship that we're happy
to share with you and that God will be pleased with you. Come
and join us, they say. Come and join us. Come and be
part of our fellowship. Come and be part of our worship
and see all the good things that God wants to do for you and wants
to give you. And again, I ask, can you tell
the difference? Can you tell the difference?
Why was Paul so worked up? Why did Paul take the time to
write this letter, to go through all these arguments, to... I
mean, it's not easy reading getting into these passages in Galatians
because the arguments are tight. The arguments are forceful. The
arguments are profound. And you've got to put on your
thinking hat to understand what Paul is saying. But why was it
so important to him? Why did he not just shrug his
shoulders and say, well, it's close enough? Paul understood that grace and
works can't mix to any degree. He knew that the blessings of
God can only come by grace, can only be a free gift from God. If we do anything to deserve
it, if we do anything to merit it, if we do anything to earn
it, or imagine that we can, we've lost it. It's gone. Trying to earn God's pleasure
by what we do is futile. And you've got to understand
that. People think that good works are the way to recommend
them to God. Just about everyone you speak
to will say, well, you know, I'm not as bad as the next person.
I try to do good to my neighbour. I might not be able to. do as
much as I like, but I'm pretty careful about what I say and
what I do. And they imagine that in some
way they're going to get to the end of their life and have earned
God's blessing. And they've never heard the gospel.
They've never heard the gospel preached at all. Oh, they've
heard about Jesus, and they've read passages from the Bible,
and they've sung plenty of hymns and choruses, and maybe they've
enjoyed it. they've never heard the gospel,
not in their hearts, not in their souls. Paul says in Romans chapter
11, verse 6, speaking about the grace of God, he says, if it's
by grace, then it is no more of works. Otherwise, grace is
no more grace. It either comes completely undeserved,
by promise, as a gift, or it comes because you've earned it
and merited it. He says if it's by grace, then
it's no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. But if
it be of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is
no more work. The two are mutually exclusive.
And it's that lesson that he is again seeking the Galatians
to grasp. And it's as crucial today as
it was then. It's as important now as it ever
was to these Galatian believers. Look at verse 14 of Galatians
chapter 3. The blessing of Abraham. The blessing of Abraham. That
was what we read together from Genesis chapter 15. That was
the blessing. The blessing was that God would
bless Abraham with many, many children. That was the promise. Abraham was anxious because he
said, I don't have any children. How can these promises that I'm
going to be the father of a mighty nation, how can that possibly
be true when I'm an old man and I'm married to an old woman and there's no children? It's
one of my servants that's going to inherit everything I've got.
And the Lord took him out There's no streetlights where God took
Abraham. God took him out into the fields
and he said, now look up, Abraham, in the darkness and see if you
can count the stars. He said, I'm going to give you
children like that. And he brought him forth abroad
and said, look now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be
able to number them. And he said unto him, so shall
thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord and
he counted it to him for righteousness. So what was this promise? This
promise is that there was going to be a seed. But what was the
blessing that Abraham got? Abraham was given to see that
there was a spiritual dimension to all of this. Not only were
there promises to do with land and family, but there was a spiritual
dimension also. And God gave Abraham the gift
to be able to see that he was going to supply Abraham with
a spiritual people. And that blessing of Abraham
was counted as righteousness to him. He was counted righteous,
he was counted holy, he was counted innocent, he was counted pure,
he was counted as one whom God had freely applied righteousness
to. It was nothing to do with law. Indeed, the argument goes on
to say that the law didn't even come for another 430 years, so
it couldn't have been anything to do with law. And that's the
point that Paul is making here in this passage. So the blessings
of Abraham are the blessings of righteousness, are the blessings
of peace with God. Yes, they had a manifestation
in the fact that a child was born, Isaac was born. And through
Isaac, the seed came. And the stars of the sky in number
are not the physical children of Abraham. but the spiritual
children of Abraham, the children that came and were given to him
with the same blessing of righteousness, with the same blessing of peace
with God. That the blessing of Abraham,
says Paul in Galatians, we're still in verse 14 of chapter
three, 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 receiving the Spirit is receiving
the fullness of God's blessings. We've talked about that before
in the context of the covenant of peace. The Father chose a
people in eternal election. That people that he chose the stars of the sky in number,
that people that were chosen were committed into the hands
of Christ in that eternal council, that covenant of peace, committed
into Christ's hands. And Christ was given the responsibility
from his father of making sure that that people chosen by the
father be preserved, be looked after, be protected, and ultimately
be delivered out from under their sin. The judgment of God that
came upon Adam in the garden when he fell was carried, not
by those individuals, but by the Lord Jesus Christ. He became
their substitute. He became their surety. And the
third person of that great council of peace, the Holy Spirit, observing
the Father committing into the care of Christ this people, numbered
as the stars of the sky, He undertook to bring the blessings that Christ
accomplished in His death on the cross to those people in
their life's experience through the preaching of the gospel.
He would come and he would breathe spiritual life into them. He
would give them that gift of faith. and they would be brought
into a knowledge of the truth. And so Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit agreed together in the covenant of grace that this is
how it would be. And the promise of the Spirit,
the promise of the Spirit that is here spoken about in verse
14 is this promise of the Spirit to bring faith. to that people
that God had committed to Christ and for whom Christ died on the
cross. This is the blessings of divine
love. It is the blessings of eternal
election, the choice of God. It is the blessings of Christ's
suretorship, his standing for us, all bestowed upon the people
of God's choice. What are these blessings of Abraham? Righteousness. He makes a people
holy, not because they live holy lives, but because He gives us
His holiness. Nothing to do with our works,
nothing to do with the good deeds, nothing to do with the law or
what the law demands of us, but God's righteousness freely bestowed. These are the promise, this is
the promise of the Spirit, our justification. our redemption
by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the calling of us out
of that state of being a sinner before God into that state of
conversion as God the Holy Spirit applies the truth to our hearts
and causes our eyes to open to see and our ears to open to hear
the truth of the gospel. and that we might be converted
and brought into that family of God by adoption. It's the
blessings of everlasting life. It's the blessings of heavenly
glory, not because we've worked hard for it, but because we've
received it freely at the goodness and mercy of God. All these spiritual
blessings come by promise. They all come by the Spirit.
And another word that is used to describe that is inheritance. The Bible uses the word inheritance
to describe what God has done for us. He's given us an inheritance. And that inheritance is laid
up for us as the heirs. We are the heirs. Those, indeed,
who have been given this spirit of promise, we are the heirs
of all the good and all the blessings of God, of grace and of peace. I think a few weeks ago we spoke
about the Apostle Paul's conversion and we were thinking about what
had happened to him when he was converted by God. He was a man
who was active amongst these Judaizers. If someone was going
to cause the Church of Jesus Christ trouble, it was Paul or
Saul, as he was then called, before he was converted. But
God met him on the Damascus Road. Saul became Paul. Saul was changed
from that one who was aggressive towards the gospel to one who
trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ. But I want to draw your attention
back to what Saul was told on the day of his conversion. Listen
to these words. They're drawn from Acts 26, verse
18. That Saul, he would become Paul,
would be given the task to open the eyes of the Gentiles. Who were the Gentiles? They were
the non-Jews. So these Galatians were Gentiles. And Paul would
be given the job of opening their eyes to turn them from darkness
to light, from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive
forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified
by faith that is in me. Right at the very beginning,
Paul was told about the inheritance, and that inheritance is something
that he would be called upon to preach. amongst the Gentiles. So that was his whole job. That's
why he's here today. That's why he's in Galatia. That's
why he's writing to the Galatians. That's why he's going around
in these missionary journeys. That's why he's taking this burden,
this responsibility of preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, the
gospel that comes by faith, by promise, and by inheritance. The heart of sovereign grace
gospel is that it is a free inheritance, a free gift, and it is a promise
from God to the people that he has loved and chosen. God's gifts
are laid up for his elect, not because of their works, not because
of their merits, but secured by Christ and applied by the
Spirit according to God's good will. They are received by faith,
in believing God, in trusting the Lord Jesus Christ, the promised
blessings flow to us as undeserving sinners. Don't try to make yourself
deserving of God's blessings. You'll never do it. And you'll
never have any peace trying to do it. You have to receive them
freely and trust that the promises of God are true. The purpose of God's law. What was the law for? If all we are saying here, if
what Paul is saying to the Galatians is that these blessings, they
come to you by promise, they were given by promise to Abraham
hundreds of years before the law was given. Well, what was
the law for? Why did God give us the law? If he was planning to give us
all of his blessings of righteousness and redemption and everlasting
life and eternal glory, if he was planning to give us them
all just freely, without any cost to ourselves, why did he
give us the law? What was the point in doing that?
So verse 19, the apostle asks, wherefore then serveth the law? And he gives us the answer. It
was added for a reason and it was added for a season. It was
given because of transgressions and it was given in order to
hedge in the Jewish people from the time of Moses till the time
of Christ. And that's it. That's it. It was given to mark their iniquity,
to show them that they were going wrong, to show them that that
was not the way that God was directing them to live. It was
given to them for discipline, as it were, to count up the number
of times that they went wrong and to teach them thereby that
they were to honour God. It never was for the Gentiles. It was never given to the Gentiles. It was not given to the heathen. It was given to the children
of Israel. It was given to the Jews. Now, look at something
here because I think it's very interesting. Paul is careful
to make this distinction. He says in verse 22, the scripture
hath concluded all under sin. We're all guilty of sin, whether
we're Jews or whether we're Gentiles, non-Jews. These Galatians were
as guilty as anyone else. They were as guilty as Paul was,
as a Jew. The scripture hath concluded
all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might
be given to them that believe. Right, them that believe. But
before faith came, that is before the age of faith, before the
revelation of Jesus Christ and the fullness of the revelation
of Jesus Christ, at the time of his coming, before faith came,
who were kept under the law? We were kept under the law. Who's Paul talking about? The
Gentiles? No, the Jews. He's saying we were kept under
the law. That was what it was for. It
was a schoolmaster. It was a schoolmaster to correct
us, to keep us safe, to hedge us in, to protect us. Before
faith came, we were kept under the law. Shut up. unto the faith
which should afterwards be revealed, the coming of Christ, what the
book of Hebrews calls the fullness of the revelation that came at
the time of Christ, which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore
the law was our schoolmaster, not the Gentile schoolmaster,
the schoolmaster of the Jews. to bring us unto Christ, that
we might be justified by faith. So the schoolmaster brought the
Jews to the time of Christ so that the Jews might be justified
by faith. There was never any justification
for the Jews under the law either. So if there's no justification
for the Jews under the law, why would anybody think there was
going to be any justification for the Gentiles under the law?
The argument is clear. But after verse 25, that faith
is come, we, That is, the Jews are no longer under a schoolmaster. The schoolmaster's time has come
to an end. The children's time in school
has come to an end. For ye are all the children of
God by faith in Christ Jesus. You see how it changes from we
to ye? So he's saying you and the Jews,
the Gentiles and the Jews, these Galatians to whom he is writing,
and the Jews, they all find their union together in Christ, not
by the works of the law, not by their deeds and their merits
and their goodnesses, but all according to the promise of the
Spirit, all because of the inheritance of Abraham, the purpose of the
law was simply to hedge them in from that period from which
it was given until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, with this I'm going to
conclude. He goes on in verse 26 to say,
for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been
baptised into Christ have put on Christ. So here he is saying,
Paul speaking of baptism and being baptized into Christ. Now, we hold to believers' baptism. We believe in believers' baptism. It is a mark of obedience to
the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't believe in baby baptism. or infant baptism as it's sometimes
called, or if you're really clever you call it pedo-baptism, but
we're not that clever so we call it infant baptism. So we don't
believe in that because it is believers who are baptised. It is those who have been brought
in their understanding into a knowledge of their union with Christ, the
fact that when the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, he
died for them, and they are possessors of the promise of the Spirit,
the blessings of God, the justification, the righteousness, the everlasting
life, and the eternal glory. It's when an individual has been
converted and brought into a knowledge of the truth, that they are possessors
of these blessings, that they are baptised and it is a profession
of their faith. It's a way of saying to their
brothers and sisters in the Lord that I have been united to the
Lord Jesus Christ. I believe it to be so. So Paul's
speaking of baptism here and we hold believers baptism rather
than anything that happens to babies. And it is a picture of
our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the Lord
Jesus Christ died on the cross, he went into the grave, but he
rose again the third day. And so believers are baptised
by immersion because that continues the authenticity of the picture. A believer goes under the water
and then rises back up again. It's a picture of a resurrection
with Christ. And that relationship that we
have with him, that being united with him in death and in resurrection,
is a picture of all who trust in him. Baptised into Christ
is to put on Christ, to put on Christ's righteousness, to receive
the promises of Christ, to enjoy the liberty that Christ has,
to experience grace The old distinctions of the law, they don't remain
anymore. Jew and Gentile. bond and free,
male and female. We don't hold these distinctions
anymore as far as our worship is concerned. The old types of
the law, they're passed away. The old patterns have been replaced
with a new reality and we have access to God as those who are
possessors of the inheritance. Having been chosen in Christ
in election, united to Him as our surety, redeemed by His blood
on the cross, justified by His righteousness, regenerated by
His Spirit, we are the children of God by faith in Him. We just trust God for His promises. That's where it comes to. We
just trust him for his promises. We say, God, if that's what you've
done, if that's what you've done, if that's what your purpose is,
if that's what your plan is, I believe it. I believe it. I
trust you. We become heirs of God, not by
works, not by law, not by doing, not by earning, but by promise,
by gift, by grace. Heirs according to a promise
that cannot be broken because the God who loves us is faithful
to the end. We began by speaking about brethren
and brothers and our union together with the Lord Jesus Christ is
the union of a brother. We are brought into the family
of God by adoption. God is our father. and therefore
the Son of God is our brother. Christ is our elder brother. We are brothers and sisters accepted
equally by God in the beloved Son. Romans 8 verse 16 says,
we are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. A father leaves
his inheritance to his children. And God's inheritance is given
to his children, not just one son, but all the sons and all
the daughters are joint heirs together with Christ of the blessed
privileges of God's goodness and grace and mercy. Everything
that is Christ's is ours. How could we possibly work for
that? How could we possibly earn that? How could we begin to merit by
our obedience the delight and the pleasure of Almighty God
in me? All these privileges, all these
graces, all these blessings of holiness and sanctification and
righteousness before God, they're not ours by works, not ours by
law, but by grace and by promise and by inheritance. They are
ours thanks to our elder brother. May his spirit grant us grace
to live in the freedom of that love and that mercy, which is
our portion. Amen.