This morning, we'll begin reading
here in Galatians chapter 3, and let's begin there in verse
13. Galatians chapter 3, verse 13. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written,
Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. that the blessing
of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,
that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Brethren, I speak after the manner of men. Though it be but a man's
covenant, yet if it be confirmed, if it be ratified, no man disalloweth
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 which was confirmed before of God in
Christ, ratified 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. For if the inheritance
be of the law, it is no more a promise, for 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 hands of a mediator. The blessings promised to Abraham. Abraham lived somewhere in the
neighborhood of 4,000 years ago. And yet we're told here that
there were blessings promised to Abraham. When you and I read
the Scriptures, we should never cease to be thankful for the
New Testament. That God has given us the New
Testament Scripture. Because the same Holy Spirit
that moved upon the prophets of old to write the Old Testament. That same Spirit moved upon the
apostles and other men to write the New Testament. And the only
way to properly interpret the Old Testament, the only way for
you and I to read the Old Testament and know for sure what it means
is in the light of the New Testament. And this is so important, and
I want to stress this this morning. When the New Testament does interpret
the Old Testament, let us be content with that interpretation.
I have read men, and they read where the Apostle Paul or one
of the other apostles interpret the Old Testament, and they begin
to question it and debate with it. instead of just bowing down
and receiving it. Here's the interpretation of
it. Some read when Paul interprets the Old Testament as he often
does, and instead of bowing down to it and being thankful for
the interpretation, they question it. And they say, now how can
this mean that? I never got that out of the Old
Testament when I read it. I don't know if it means that
or not. Well, here's the way you and I should look at this.
The Holy Spirit comes, as it were, to the Apostle Paul and
says, Paul, here's what I said to those prophets a long time
ago. I spoke to them and they wrote this word down. And Paul,
here's what I meant by that. Here's what you write down. Here's
the interpretation of that. We can trust the Apostle Paul's
interpretation of the Old Testament, because the same Spirit with
which they wrote with, he interprets with. We interpret Scripture
with Scripture. If you and I didn't have the
New Testament to interpret the Old Testament, not only would
we be at a loss to understand what it meant, we'd err in it. with error in it. And here we
have a perfect example of this in our text this morning. When
we read the Old Testament, that God had promised certain blessings
to Abraham. If you and I went back to the
Old Testament and read that the Lord had promised that He had
blessed Abraham's seed, how would we interpret that? Abraham, I'm
going to bless you, I'm going to bless your seed after you.
Well, here's the way you and I would interpret that. We'd
interpret that as belonging to Abraham's natural descendants,
the children of Israel. And there is a definite sense
in which that's so. But if we stopped there and applied
the blessing to Abraham's natural descendants, boy, when we looked
around us today and saw what was going on with his natural
descendants, wouldn't we be discouraged? Because where are they now? And
where have they been for the last 2,000 years? We read this in Genesis chapter
12, verse 3, where the Lord came to Abraham and He said, Abraham,
in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. All
the families. Not just your natural seed, inheriting
natural blessings, But all the families of the earth shall be
blessed." What were those blessings? Well, you and I have been studying
this third chapter, and it was justification, wasn't it? The Scripture foreseeing that
God would justify the heathen through faith preached the gospel
to Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. One of
the blessings was justification. Another was imputed righteousness.
Abraham believed God and it was given to him. What? Righteousness. Imputed to him for righteousness. Now the book of Genesis, as far
as I know, doesn't tell us what those blessings were. I have
read, there in the book of Genesis, where the Lord told Abraham,
I'll bless you, I promise to bless you. But you know, we never
find out. that he told Abraham what that
blessing was. But here the Apostle Paul comes
and he tells us what those blessings are. He tells us here in verse
14, I read to you, that the blessings that God promised to Abraham
might come on the Gentiles. What is that blessing? That we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. You and I would never know that
if Paul hadn't interpreted that to us, would we? We could have
went to the Old Testament and searched and searched and searched
what God said to Abraham, but we'd have never known it. Did
Abraham know that was what the blessing would be? I don't know.
Maybe he did. But we're not told that he told
Abraham. And what I'm saying here this
morning in regard to the Old and New Testament is this, that
God has put so much honor upon the Old Testament Scriptures
that He tells the Jew and the Gentiles. He tells all the world
of all ages, old and young, religious and irreligious, female and male. He tells us all. You are not
going to understand the Old Testament except you understand it in the
light of the New Testament. That's the only way we can understand
it. The eunuch was sitting in his chariot reading Isaiah chapter
53. And Philip went to him and said,
Do you understand what you're reading? He said, How can I? Somebody has to interpret this
to me. And Philip interpreted the Old
Testament to him. He began and preached Jesus unto
him. Jesus that's revealed to us in
the New Testament. How can I know what the Old Testament
says? Except somebody interpreted it.
How can you and I know what the Old Testament means if the New
Testament doesn't tell us what it means? Well, the Jews said,
and they still say today, at least some of the Orthodox Jews
do, we have the Old Testament. We have the Old Testament. And
they did, and they do. But they'll never understand
it. if they don't look at the New Testament and interpret the
Old Testament by it. The Old Testament and the New
Testament are one. The church is built upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets. Just one foundation. And God has joined the apostles
and prophets together. And what God has joined together,
let not man put asunder. What was the blessings promised
to Abraham? Here in verse 14, we have it
in a nutshell. And what was it? It was the Holy
Spirit. That the promise of God to Abraham
might come on the Gentiles. That we might receive the promise
of the Spirit. And as you read the New Testament,
sometimes you read of the promise. Or sometimes the Spirit is called
the Spirit of promise. Remember when the Lord Jesus
Christ was ready to ascend back to heaven, and He was speaking
to His apostles. And He said, Behold, I send the
promise of My Father upon you. I send the promise. What is that?
Well, right here it is. It's the Spirit. And he said,
you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon
you. That was the promise, the promise
of my father. He's going to send it upon you.
And on the day of Pentecost, Peter was preaching to those
Jews and he said, repent every one of you and be baptized and
you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. And then he said
this, for the promise is to you. and to your children, and to
all them that be aforeof, even as many as the Lord our God shall
call." The promise of what? The promise of the Holy Spirit.
The blessing that God promised to Abraham would come on the
Gentiles through Jesus Christ by faith. And Paul was writing
to the Ephesians, in Ephesians 1 and 12, and he said, you believed
in Christ. You trusted Christ. in whom also
after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit
of promise." So all through the Bible, He's a promised Spirit. And He's come and He dwells in
every last believer today. He's the promised Spirit. So
the blessings that God promised to Abraham, they were spiritual
blessings. They weren't carnal blessings. Abraham would be the father of
all of those who believed. Now that's the spiritual blessing. It's through faith that we become
Abraham's children. Through faith we're justified.
Through faith we have righteousness, and through faith we have the
Holy Spirit. through faith we're the children
of Abraham. Now that's the blessing. That's
the blessing. Salvation comes to us because
it was promised to us. And when we believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ, we become children of Abraham. Not natural seed. We'll never be the natural seed
of Abraham. We're Gentiles. But as soon as we believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ, we become Abraham's children. We become
Abraham's seed. Remember when the Lord Jesus
was going through Jericho and Zacchaeus was up in the tree
trying to get a glimpse of him? And the Lord came there at that
tree and stopped and looked up at him and said, Zacchaeus, make
Hastin come down. Today I must abide at your house.
And he made haste and came down. And the Scripture says he received
the Lord joyfully, believed on Him, put his trust in Him. And
he said, Lord, half of my goods I'll give to the poor. And if
I've taken anything from anybody by false accusation, I'll restore
them fourfold. And the Lord said, this day salvation
comes to your house. And remember what else he said
to him? Because you're a child of Abraham. You're a child of
Abraham. How did he know that he was a
child of Abraham? There was all kinds of children of Abraham
around there. There was all kinds of Jews around
there. They weren't children of Abraham. Not in the sense
that Zacchaeus was. Why didn't the Lord say to him,
you're a child of Abraham? He was a spiritual child of Abraham.
Well, how simple. Because he received Christ joyfully. He believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what made him a child
of Abraham. These spiritual blessings. Zacchaeus was a child through
faith. I don't mean to undervalue the
temporal and natural blessings that God promised to Abraham's
natural descendants. He did promise Abraham's natural
descendants blessings. They were blessed greatly. The
Lord gave them the land of Canaan, whales that were already dug,
Houses already built, vineyards already planted. He gave them
the law. He gave them the oracles, his
word, the priesthood. Those were blessings. But they
were all carnal blessings. And they were all temporal blessings.
Most of them did not profit from these blessings. Most of them died in unbelief,
without Christ. And when He came, what did they
do? They rejected Him. They were the natural seed of
Abraham, and God had blessed them physically, but they weren't
partakers of the spiritual blessing. And that's what we're studying
about, isn't it? The spiritual blessing. God promised Abraham
spiritual blessing. And there come a time to the
children of Israel, Abraham's natural seed, when these temporal
blessings ceased. They lost their temple, they
lost their priesthood, they lost their privileges, and they were
scattered throughout the world. Just began to regather in 1948
when they became a nation again. So these blessings that you and
I are looking at this morning, they're not physical blessings.
They're not carnal blessings, they're spiritual blessings.
Only those who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Ye are the children of God by
faith in Jesus Christ, and if ye be Christ, then are ye Abraham's
seed and heirs according to the promise. If you believe in Jesus
Christ this morning, you're Abraham's seed. You're heir of these promises
that God gave to Abraham. These spiritual promises. All of us this morning should
be thankful for our natural blessings. Boy, the Lord has blessed all
of us. There's not a person here this morning that can say, God
has been good to me. All of us can say that. What
degree of health we've got, He's given it to us. It's winter time
now and He sent His cold upon us. But soon the sun will start
warming the earth up. Spring will come. We'll plant
our gardens. We'll have fruitful seasons. How the Lord has blessed us.
He's blessed us. He's blessed us so much. And
we should be so thankful that every day the sun rises upon
us. That's God's blessing. when He
sends the rain upon us. That's His blessing. Gives us
jobs, gives us income, gives us children and grandbabies.
How God has blessed every one of us with natural, carnal, spiritual
blessings. They're just temporary, but they're
blessings, aren't they? And we ought to be thankful for
them. But I tell you, there are blessings. There are those spiritual
blessings. There are those everlasting blessings.
Those heavenly blessings. that you and I can't live without. And here's what He said, Israel
shall be saved in the Lord when they're never last in salvation.
That's what we're talking about this morning. Things that are
eternal. Things that will never end. Israel
shall be saved in the Lord Jesus Christ. with an everlasting salvation,
eternal life that they'll never lose. And you shall never be
ashamed, he said. You'll never be confused. You'll
never be confounded. A world that has no end. That's what I'm concerned about
this morning. And that's what the Apostle Paul here is teaching
us. These spiritual blessings that
was promised to Abraham. Now, why in this world as we
read verse 14, would people such as we are be blessed with such
blessings. Why in the world, as we read
verse 14, people such as we are be blessed with such blessings?
That the blessing promised to Abraham might come on the Gentiles
That's what we are. We're just dead dog Gentiles. We're not keepers of the law.
We don't even know what the law requires of us. We were led away
into dumb islands. Dead dog Gentiles. That's all
we were then. That's all we are now. Dead dog
Gentiles. But God has blessed us. He's
blessed us. He's blessed us with His Spirit.
That's what all this is in a nutshell. What is salvation all about?
It's about the Spirit of God's Son coming to us and regenerating
us, giving us a new heart, a new life, new loves, new desires,
and crying, Father, Father, we have a new God. We have a new
Father. We have a new Savior. He's blessed
us. And why in the world? Can you
and I own such promises this morning? Well, He gives us two reasons.