Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 20, 2024 | Galatians - The Cursed Law

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October 20, 2024 | Galatians - The Cursed Law · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good to be with you.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh there are just some of those big, big questions in life that we often have.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of them, you know, that well, I should say like the kind of questions that if somebody asks them at like a dinner or a a get together, you're just like, calm down.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not not at that level just yet.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of those questions is, you know, what do you think happens when we die, right?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: What what's what's next?
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what is interesting is that question, um, despite the vast differences and beliefs across all the world religions, almost every single one of them, no matter where you look, has some kind of belief that our actions have positive and negative consequences, and that there is either someone or something at the end of it all, whatever that is, that provides judgment.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that we're going to be held to an account for what we've done in this world.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly the Bible supports this.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that God will sit in judgment over all of his creation, and that uh based upon that judgment, it will determine whether we go to be with him in heaven or spend our time in hell.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and perhaps if you've thought about that question, what will I say before God when that time comes?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you or someone you know has uh thought something like this.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've lived a pretty good life.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've done quite a lot.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that when I get to the end of it, God is gonna know how all the good things that I've done and He'll reward me for that.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take my chances, right?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, what we kind of want to look at is really that question.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: What will happen if you go before God and you go, I'm going to bet on myself?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to, I believe that I have done more good than bad.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I believe that I've been fairly, of course, not perfect, but lived a pretty righteous life.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: What does happen?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul in Galatians 3, as we'll look, he kind of takes that question and runs with it.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, okay, let's sort of pretend that you did rely on your good works, that you did rely on your attempts at righteousness, your good deeds, and tried to work yourself into God's good graces through that.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll he's going to use this an argument, in fact, a lot of arguments from the Old Testament to sort of make his point.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably not going to be surprised by Paul's point.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: He says that it's not going to work.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: But what's more interesting is why he says it won't work.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when we try and get by just on our own works?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: In Galatians 3 begins in verse 7.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our passage does this morning.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, You know then that those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now the Scriptures saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why bring up Abraham, right?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're familiar with your Bible, you might remember his name.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's the really the father of God's covenant people.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um even though later on Israel as sort of a nation and entity came together under Moses, Abraham is the guy that God called out of the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, brought him in and sort of specifically said, You are my person, I am your God, and from you everything will happen.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham is super important to anybody who has a Jewish background.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to remember, in Galatians, Paul is talking to people who have a Jewish background.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: They have trusted in Christ.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: They've said, We believe that Jesus died for our sins, but you might remember they have begun to add on regulations, sort of hoops that need to be jumped through in order to be, you know, really righteous, really have it all together.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we've looked for the first couple chapters here.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Paul has taken great efforts, and in fact, he will continue to sort of go, yeah, that sounds nice.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like there are certain things you do that make you really righteous.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: But he goes, when you take that logic to the end of itself, all it really amounts to is a righteousness or a justification that comes from yourself rather than from God.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says that that's not the way that the Bible says things should work.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in order to make that case in chapter 3, he's gonna kind of play on an aw play on an away field instead of home turf.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's going to use the Old Testament to make his entire point.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Only at the very, very end is he going to bring in Christ.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what he does.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: He starts with Abraham.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now the other thing to understand is that Abraham has almost a mythical status when Paul is speaking to this congregation or these churches, that the Jews by this time, see, Abraham was about 2,000 years earlier.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: About the same distance between us and Jesus is the distance from Paul to Abraham.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in that span of time, there's sort of some legend, some sort of mythical stories that have come about.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of like that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and was so honest he told his father.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: That never happened.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: His biographer made that up.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: He also never had wooden teeth and never wore a wig.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But when we talk about these figures that just sort of build up in our consciousness or conscience, they they take on a life of their own, right?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So Abraham, by this point in time, the Jewish rabbis had lifted him up to this level where they go, yeah, Abraham, Father Abraham, saying that you were a son of Abraham was the basically the same thing as saying you trusted in God.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham, this man of great blessing, he was counted righteous because he had stood the test that God had placed before him, primarily through the binding of his son Isaac, willing to make him a sacrifice.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was through that that God placed his favor and his trust upon Abraham.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was his obedience to the Lord that made him this sort of fountain and wellspring of God's good grace and mercy.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And to a people who desperately desired to return to that period of time, they look back on Abraham and they go, okay, so we need to do that too.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: We need to sort of live this life of obedience and righteousness so that God will bring us blessing as well.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, okay, we'll talk about Abraham, but let's go check the tape, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like let's go look back at what Genesis says about Abraham, not what your traditions have built up about him.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul quotes uh two different places in Genesis here.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: When he says that, actually, he makes a pretty, a very interesting claim that Scripture saw in advance we when we speak about uh the Word of God being living and active, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: When we speak about uh the Bible being God not just sort of having written down a story, but that the Bible still lives through him.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as when we go and read the Word of God, that we are reading God's own words himself, like when we look at Scripture, what Paul is implying about the Old Testament is he's like, God, even back then, what is written down is that he had a prophecy and he was telling us things that were going to happen before they ever happened.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what he means with Abraham is he says, yeah, there's that part in Genesis 12 where God tells Abraham he's going to be a blessing to the nations.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And when you read that in Genesis 12, you don't think too much about it because it just sounds like this great promise.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But what Paul says is when you look back, though, you realize God was saying that the gospel would eventually sort of overflow from the cup of the Jews and go into the rest of the world, into the Gentiles.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Gentiles being non-Jews, and also all of us being Gentiles.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so what God was saying way back in the beginning of the Bible is he had a plan that his message of salvation would go beyond Abraham and the Jews and into the rest of the world, but that it would be Abraham's descendant who would ultimately be the great blessing.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: And as he does, he says, now the scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, and this is the quote from Genesis, all the nations will be blessed through you.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then here's his conclusion, right?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Consequently, like, therefore, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: His thesis, his main point is like Abraham was not righteous or counted as justified, declared by God to be good because of his obedience.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: All of the other stuff that they're claiming, certainly the law, but like circumcision and Isaac and those things, they came after the part that Paul quoted.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, When you go back to the beginning, it was Abraham's faith, his trust, and this promise of God, that is what God cared about.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, that same promise of blessing that was given to Abraham can be received by anybody today who also has faith.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's drawing a connection between those who are hearing and listening to these words all the way back to Abraham.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, Do you want to be a son of Abraham?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you need to have faith.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a really important question because what happened to Abraham extends to everybody else.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so if Abraham was saved by faith, then this idea that the Gentiles could just trust in the Lord and also be a part of God's covenant community, be in his kingdom, there's no problem with that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Logically, that makes sense.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if Abraham had done certain things and that's what made him righteous, well then Paul's opponents, now they have a point.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there are certain things you need to do in order for God to really care, in order for him to really love, in order for him to really bless.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as Paul makes this point, he is drawing on something that is honestly a general statement of faith.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: When we look back in Genesis, when we look at Abraham, there weren't any amazing statements that he made, or I should say very specific statements that he made, you know, about Jesus or about the cross or even using words like salvation.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, Abraham had this very pure, and we would almost say simple faith.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: He trusted in the promise of God.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: He trusted that what the Lord said would happen would actually happen.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what was credited to him as righteousness.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: But we have moved on in time from then.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham was, I mean, for us, 4,000 years ago.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul then brings things up to speed for his people, right?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: For those who are listening to him.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, okay, now let's talk about us right now, today.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for you guys in the church speaking to his opponents?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for you to say that we need to be under the law?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And for anybody who doesn't know, when I use the word law, it's like capital L law.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the laws that Moses gave.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is back in like Exodus and Leviticus.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was the system of rules that all of God's faithful people by this time said, we need to follow these things if we're going to be righteous.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: And while there's truth to that, remember this whole argument breaks down into, yes, but what is your motivation?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is it to follow after the Lord and to live with him and trust in his good promises, or is it because you think you can make it on your own?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Paul continues on here, he's going to talk about this law and what it has done, and in fact, how God's people have sort of gotten a warped understanding of its original purpose through Moses.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3 10 says, For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now it is clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the law is not based on faith.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised spirit through faith.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a little lost, that's okay.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is just like machine gun fire.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: He quotes the Old Testament four separate times in this passage.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And again, remember, he's kind of playing on the away field.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's going, My opponents in Galatia, the false teachers, they care about the Old Testament.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: We would share that as a holy text.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are some problems in what we agree that Jesus has done, but Old Testament we can agree.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to use the Old Testament to make my point.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul's argument in this paragraph breaks down into like four statements, okay?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: The first statement is that those who rely on the law are under a curse.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we say curse, this is not like witches and voodoo and you know pokey dolls and things like that.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the curse we're talking about.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: The curse is actually biblical language and it's the opposite of blessing.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were with us last spring in Deuteronomy, you know that God had told his people, hey, like following this, following the plan that I've given you, if you do it, it will bring blessing.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't, it will bring a curse, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the people in Paul's day had taken that idea, but had lived with it for so long and had added so many things to it that there were some people who had gotten the wrong idea.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: They said, okay, this would be like the Pharisees, you know, a lot of the people that Jesus talks to, they'd be like, I'm pretty righteous.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing pretty good on my own.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I am carrying out the law of the Lord.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've added things to the law.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was, in its hundreds of commands, it wasn't big enough for me.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have added things to it, and now I'm doing that, and so God is pleased with me.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I am righteous.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul goes, Oh no, you've missed the point.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody actually fulfills, fully fulfills perfectly the law of the Lord.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is under a curse because nobody can fully carry it out.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Those who rely on the law are under this curse, meaning those who think that it will provide their way out of trouble are ironically diving even further into the curse associated with failure to live up to it.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is the point he makes in the second point.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: No one can be justified by the law.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he quotes Habakkuk, which is a book of the Bible.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um says that the righteous will live by faith.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, even again, Old Testament, now a prophet here, we've got Paul saying that even back then, under the law, God was saying, it is your faith in what is happening here.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is what justifies you.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, to those who were in the churches, he says, You think you are becoming righteous by following the law, and in fact, it is the opposite result.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have just made it even more obvious that you cannot live up to the standards that God has for you.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Justification, then, must come from outside of the law, from someplace else, because it cannot be found within the law.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It only reveals how far we have fallen.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, the law and faith are mutually exclusive.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here he quotes from Leviticus.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Paul's point in this is that you cannot walk down both roads at the same time.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot genuinely do that, right?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you cannot say, God, my faith in God will save me, and I cannot do the works of the law to save myself, and then also go, yeah, but I'm gonna hedge my bets, and I'm going to try really hard over here just in case the faith thing maybe doesn't work out as much, and when I get before the Lord, like I want to have a good resume, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says it doesn't work like that.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Even back in the Old Testament, when they were under the law, and we could talk about the depths of it, like the system of sacrifices and holidays, and you know, you can't have clothing that had multiple different kinds of fabric in it, no mold in the house, and what to do if you're unclean, and all of those things.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: God says that it was ultimately faith that produces the result.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was not literally sacrificing the bull, but faith that the bull would cover their sins.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: We find this out in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, where the author there says, look, the blood of bulls and goats cannot save a single person.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: But God had a, was making it a symbol.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was showing something that was going to come in the future, and it was their faith that it was had an effect that made it have an effect, if that makes sense.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Point being, you could attempt to follow the law or have faith in the one who gave the law, but it was still faith and what God had promised that saved you.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was not doing everything by the letter.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we come to this point, and Paul has sort of established this problem.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says, everybody's under the curse, nobody can get out of the curse, and it is, in fact, if you pursue the law even further, it undermines your faith.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Righteousness, justification, like being made right with God, has to come from outside the law.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yet the law still exists.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do we do?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Fourth and final point Christ redeems us from the curse of the law.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where we understand the idea of Jesus as a substitute for us.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: We would call it, technically, you would call it substitutionary atonement.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to remember that.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is, we deserve punishment.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have sinned and are under a curse, and Jesus comes in and takes the punishment that we deserve, right?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we look at Jesus on the cross, Paul quotes Deuteronomy here.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was a passage about those who are cursed hang on a tree, right?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know your New Testament, if you know about Christ's sacrifice, you understand why that's a significant statement.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those who are cursed hang on a tree.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when Jesus was later hanging on a cut tree on Calvary, right, we know that he was our representative.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: He embodied all of the punishment that is given to everybody who is under the curse.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when he died on the cross as the innocent one, the only one who has ever been able to actually fulfill the law, right?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus was the only one who ever has.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, he never should have had a punishment.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't under a curse, but he took on the curse for our benefit, for your benefit.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is Paul's argument.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, he walks out of the Old Testament and into what we would call the new by saying, look, the point is the Old Testament and everything that you love has been pointing forward and has been establishing this problem that we are under the law, but it only reveals our sin.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot become righteous by trying harder.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: We need something outside of it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: That thing outside of it was Jesus Himself, who fulfilled the law that we couldn't and was the sacrifice that we needed.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul's conclusion here is he says this is the very end, last sentence, the purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's the part that he's added now, so that we could receive the promised spirit through faith.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're tracking with that, Paul had made a pain to or made a pain point in the idea that Abraham was not saved by works, but by faith.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the question then becomes, but how does that promise work today?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul's answer to that is he says, Well, Jesus.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus has enabled us to receive the same blessings that God gave to Abraham.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, those blessings are so big and so large and so many, but we could name a number of them.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: They could be forgiveness and salvation, and they are glorification and all of the shun words that make big vocals.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: But they represent beautiful things from the Lord that says we're made right with him.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: That blessing from Abraham still applies to us today because of Christ.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Final thing that Paul then says, as he continues on, he's going to move out of the Old Testament, and he is going to move into kind of just a logical argument.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's pushing back against one final opposition from his opponent, which are saying, yeah, okay, Abraham, sure.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But like you said, he was a long time ago.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Things have happened since then.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Namely, Moses came along, gave us these rules.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: How can you say that we're under the promise of Abraham when Moses is more recent?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: He changed the game, right?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not so fast.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, brothers and sisters, which actually stop, that's important to recognize considering just last week he was calling them fools.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So he loves them, brothers and sisters, and he means by that in Christ.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm using a human illustration.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: No one sets aside or makes additions to a valid, validated human will.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: He does not say antecedes as though referring to many, but referring to one and to your seed, who is Christ.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: My point is this.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are a lawyer or you like legal things, Paul is making the argument in a way that you probably appreciate.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what God did.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: He made this promise, and just because something came later does not mean that it was suddenly, it didn't count anymore.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's not some shady backroom dealer broker type that's changing the rules as we keep going on.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: He made a promise, it's still a promise today.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are other things that were sort of brought into the equation.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like we said earlier, the simplicity of Abraham's faith, God has revealed more things since that time.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: We know more about his plan.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so our knowledge of what it means to be saved is perhaps deeper than the beautiful but straightforward faith that Abraham had.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: He was like, God said, the world will be blessed through my descendants.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any kids.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I trust that the Lord is right here.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And now we see the beauty of that and also how God has added to it in many ways.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: But as Paul says, just because something else came later doesn't mean it is wrong.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: This promise that was given to Abraham was not contingent, was not based upon our ability to do the right thing.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Praise God, because we don't.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, it was based upon the fact that the creator of the universe made a promise.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: God said, I'm going to do this, and so he does it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: If it was based upon us, oh, we'd be sunk.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we talk about the seed, this is kind of, there's some pretty interesting things here, but in brief, um, he's talking about descendants.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: This would ring true to his audience because everybody loves to say, We're a descendant of Abraham, right?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a son of Abraham or a daughter of Abraham.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And to them that means like this tradition has been passed down through all this time, and I'm a part of God's people.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, Yeah, it's a little bit bigger than you think it is.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Even when he says brothers and sisters here, right?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about we're all sons and daughters of the king.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're all brothers and sisters, even of Abraham.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sons and daughters of Abraham, rather.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so when he talks about the seed, he's making it, Paul's actually making a really technical linguistic argument.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: He says uh the form of that word back in the Old Testament was a um singular, it wasn't plural.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so the seed language was speaking of Christ.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was speaking of one descendant in the future who would bring blessing, not everybody.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so as you go back and read that passage, my friends, understand that Jesus is being spoken about, though his name isn't stated, because he is the Lord is telling Abraham, you will have one who comes from you that will bless the nations.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the point of the seed language there.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: But let's get let's get back to our big question this morning, right?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: What happens if you go before the Lord and you say, I've lived a good life?
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm confident in what I've done.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've been a pretty good person.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've certainly done more good than bad.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's captivating, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's tempting because over and over again, uh, Scripture clearly tells us that we're supposed to carry out God's will to the best of our abilities.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible says we should produce fruit, keeping in line with repentance.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, James says faith without works is dead.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to be lights into the world and the nations.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, God clearly cares about us living out the plan that He has for our lives and following in step with Him.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Deeply cares about these things.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, and this is a point made elsewhere, even by Paul, that just because we have faith, that our works don't matter.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so, if they do matter to some degree, what happens when we go before the Lord and say, I've done a lot of them?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you very quickly about a guy named Jan Roos.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jan is a professional slackliner.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Slack lining, for the 98% of you who don't know what that is, is when you walk on a piece of fabric that's but like an inch to two inches wide, and you would normally string it between like two trees, three feet off the ground.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jan makes his living stringing it between like canyons and skyscrapers, okay?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as he walks on this slack line, you do it and you're just balancing.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: As you're walking on this unbelievably narrow, flat piece of fabric, you're balancing the entire time.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a modern version of like the highwire act.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jan, this past summer in July, decided that he wanted to break the world record for distance-walked slacklining.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you might be surprised to know that the record was actually 1.7 miles, which is crazy, but he says, I'm gonna beat that.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he did was he strung a slack line between the mainland peninsula of Italy and the island of Sicily.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: 2.2 mile-long slack line.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can see him walking it there.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Jan uh at the beginning of his journey was about 800 feet above sea level.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh by the time he was in the middle, right, the lowest point of the slack line, he was about 300 feet above.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was strapped in, though it might not look like it.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but anyhow, he made it all the way across, right?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Took him three hours to walk this distance, and he did it just like you see there.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: The only problem was that four minutes before he got to the very end, he fell off.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Four minutes.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And because even though he had technically walked further than the previous record, slacklining, his distance again was like 2.2 miles.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Even though he had walked further, because he didn't complete the journey without falling, Guinness would not validate his record.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so you get 97% of the way there, and it doesn't count.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you are going to walk before the Lord and tell him that you have done good things, here is the fatal flaw in that defense.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: That we think, or many of us think, that when we go before God, that it's about a balancing act, that it's scales, it's a tug of war, it's verses.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's I've done more good than I've done bad.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have lived a pretty good life, I've been a pretty good person.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what counts?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And what the Lord tells us is that that is not how he bases his judgment.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: His judgment is, have you perfectly kept everything that I have commanded you to keep?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Have you done everything the way that I've asked, like Jesus Christ did?
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Have you lived an identical life to him?
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't lived an identical, perfectly holy, fully obedient life like Jesus, it doesn't matter if you have lived a pretty good and pretty honorable life.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: You have fallen short.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: It does not count.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: And even though you have done good things and there is benefit to that, the question that we're asking is will God let you into his heaven?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've said, you know, I've shoveled my neighbor's driveway in the snow, and I've volunteered at the food bank, and I didn't get upset when my boss yelled at me.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those things are good, but they do not overcome the weight of your sin.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's perhaps the most ironic part, is even if it was a matter of balancing the scales, you still don't have enough good things in your life to outweigh all of the sin.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's an unbelievably high standard.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so naturally, if we hear these things and see these things, really the only conclusion that we come to is that we're sunk by ourselves.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, what Paul says is that there is the solution.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: That the one who did live the perfect, fully obedient life, who walked this tightrope, this slack line, walked it all the way, and actually far, far, far longer than Jan did, right?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: But was able to live it for his entire life, every single day, every moment and every second, even when it came to his thoughts, that the one who perfectly carried out God's will and was fully obedient to him and did not deserve death, that he became our substitute, that he took the punishment that we deserved.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And because of Christ, because of his sacrifice, we now receive all of the benefits and the blessings that he has because of his privileged position in fully obedient life.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, when we go before the Lord, having trusted in Christ, and we go to God, and he says, You know, why should I let you into my heaven?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is certainly not because I've lived a pretty good life.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is, man, I've sinned greatly, but I'm covered by the blood of Jesus, who died for me and was my sacrifice.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And God says, Oh, let me stop you there.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's all you needed.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can come on in.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, all of those other things that you've done, I've forgiven you for those.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I see you, the Bible tells us this.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I see you, God says, the same way, the same way that I see my son.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we use words like being sons and daughters of the king, or we say to one another that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, without exaggeration, other than the fact that we are not God, without exaggeration, we hold the same place in the Father's eyes that Jesus does.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's an unbelievable gift of grace, right?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also the fulfillment of the promise that he made to Abraham.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my kind of summary of the lesson today.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: God made Abraham a promise.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was Abraham's trust in that promise that mattered, not his good works.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: If Abraham had tried to receive the promise through good works, he would have failed, and so will we.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, our failure to meet God's standards has brought a curse upon us, which deserves punishment, and in fact, I would add that God is righteous to bring.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus Christ took the curse of our sin upon himself, and now anyone who places their trust in his sacrifice, instead of relying on their good deeds, will receive the promise of Abraham.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, all the way back to the beginning, we said, here's our question.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: What happens if you go before the Lord and say, I'm gonna bet on myself?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: It will not go well for you.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: It won't.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna go before the Lord of the universe who knows you better than you know yourself, who knows every thought and action that you've ever had, who created you, knitted you together in your mother's womb, and you're going to say, I have some information that he wasn't privy to.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't really understand my life.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't get what I've gone through.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I don't like this system that he's set up.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's fair.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I should have to do this, because yeah, he has created things, so you say.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've done pretty good.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what you're asking for in reality is a participation trophy.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: You have not received the gold star.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have fallen short.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you go in with a chip on your shoulder, right, God is not going to have mercy on you in that moment.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: You will experience the full ends of what it means to have a righteous and holy judge over all of creation.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend, you you do not want to be on the wrong end of that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so you say, well, then what is the option?
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: The option is that the same God that would is fairly judging the world for being unable to meet his standard is the same God who loves you so much that he gave you an option to like jump out of the entire system and in fact just have faith, simple faith, in Jesus.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, it's Disney fast pass all the way, right?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: You go past the line when you get up there of everybody who's got the exact same argument that they've done righteous things and it's not going well for them, and there's just the line, the lightning pass, and God's like, come on in, everybody who's trusted in my son.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're struggling to make that jump, I respectfully push you to say that I think it's prideful.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just prideful to say that somehow you think that you can make it on your own, even though the Bible says that you can't, God says that you can't, and He has an option for you that is very easy to receive the blessings, and for you to say, you know what, I'm gonna go my own way.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but a lot of people do it.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that you won't.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's finish with that.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for today.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for the blessings that you have given to us.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, every single one of us is under a curse because we have willfully rebelled in your kingdom.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you that you have lifted so many out from under that curse by giving us the blessings of Abraham through Christ.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, through simple faith, simply trusting in Jesus as our Savior, we are redeemed, we are restored, we are forgiven, we receive the blessings of the Son of God who was able to carry out your will.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I ask for forgiveness, even still for the ways in which we fall short every single day to live the way that you have called us to.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I praise you, and Lord, I will not stop praising you for an eternity that you have also loved us enough to make sure that we could be together and be restored in relationship despite our sin.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for Jesus, and I pray that as we work out, or rather believe and understand what it means to not work out our faith, but rather to trust our way out of the curse.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that you would help us to find peace in that and to help us to submit, to not have the kind of pride that says that we can go our own way, but rather the humility to say, I couldn't do it on my own, and I needed Christ every step.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's in your name we pray.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.