Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 27, 2024 | Galatians - What's the Point?

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October 27, 2024 | Galatians - What's the Point? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I I love, love, love.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh baby dedications.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um congratulations to Jacob and Maddie.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, there are a lot of different ways that you could try and summarize or in one sentence say what the Christian faith is.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: One of them would be that it is uh a response of faith to the promises of God.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: That would that would sort of summarize a lot of basically all of it.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, throughout time, we have often tried to throw other things in the mix to uh work our way into a relationship with God that is whole and complete, and uh.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It is only our faith in God that brings us close to Him and renews us and gives us the blessings that He has promised.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a point that Paul has been making over and over and over again in the letter to the Galatians.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in particular, Paul's point is that the law of Moses, uh, the sort of the set of rules in the Old Testament, are unable, and in fact, it is an impossible task to try and become righteous by living through those laws, right?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so as Paul does this, and he's been hammering this point home, that the law is unable to make anyone righteous, right?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have a broken relationship with the Lord, we need to be restored, but the law isn't the way, as much as we might try, then a natural question comes up that actually sort of threads its way throughout even our entire lives, which is, okay, so then what is the purpose of the law?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: If it is sort of this inefficient, impossible standard that is sort of done away with, and Paul's been spending a lot of time dogging on the law and its um ineffectiveness for Christian liberty, then what is the purpose of it?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say this threads its way through our life because it begins to help us answer questions when we answer this, sorry, the big question we're looking at, it helps us answer other questions, like, so then why should I look at the Old Testament?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why not just read the New Testament?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or what is the purpose of God's plan throughout history for humanity?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: What role did the law play in that, or were we all just simply twiddling our thumbs until Jesus came along?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: What role did the law play?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to look at that this morning, and we'll begin by starting in Galatians chapter 3, verse 19, if you want to turn there with me.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, Why then was the law given?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right, this is our question.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was, and then he begins to answer.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: He says, It was added for the sake of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise was made would come.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: The law was put into effect through angels by means of a mediator.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a mediator is not just for one person alone, but God is one.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so, Paul, again, we're in midpoint towards the end, kind of the last third of chapter three.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were with us the last few weeks, you know that Paul's opponents have been saying that you can find this righteousness through the law, that Christianity is not just trusting in Christ for righteousness to receive the blessings of God, but rather we go all the way back.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you must do all the ceremonial things.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: You must sort of jump through these hoops in order for God to really, you know, really give you the gold star.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a problem because you can't walk down both roads at the same time.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Either you're justified by faith or you're justified by works.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can't possibly be justified by both at the same time.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so the opponents that Paul's been talking to, and we might imagine the Galatians, those in these churches who have been hearing this false teaching, are then looking at Paul, this guy who grew up Jewish, who was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, was like, I mean, crazy smart, knew everything about the law, and for him to go, yeah, you don't need it in the way that you thought you did, this is their inevitable question.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so then what was the point?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because two-thirds of the Bible, nearly three-quarters of the Bible, is the Old Testament, which gives us stories about these things.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: So do we only need to read the New Testament?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: What's the point?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul has really two reasons, and then a further explanation.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that the law was given for the sake of our sins.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: It both revealed sin and increased the amount of sin that was committed.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um, this might sound a little odd, but there are probably a lot of things in your life that would follow this same category.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: For me, when I was in high school, I played tennis a little bit and not very well at all.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So at one point I went to go to a tennis pro, take lessons from them.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh when I went to the tennis pro and went into sort of, you know, their they had special courts that we went to.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I the first time I walked onto the court, he was like, What shoes are those?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I these are the shoes that I wear to, you know, be bad at tennis.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Those are not the shoes that you wear.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: They they weren't proper tennis, they didn't have the right um sort of bottoms on them, and so they would scuff up the courts as I was going back and forth.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, We don't do that here.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so no, none of my high school coaches had ever been like, Look, your shoes are a problem.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: There are many other problems that you have, your shoes are not one of them.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so, though I understood sort of the basics of what it was to, in that case, play tennis, I sort of went to the next level, and then it was revealed to me that there were all of these other things that I was falling short in accomplishing.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of the purpose of the law, is it both told us of our sinful nature, reminded us of it, and in fact increased the amount of sin that we were committing because of its additional rules.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that is going to bring up another great question later on, which is so did God want us to sin more?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that this morning.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But Paul's simply making the case.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the first reason that the law was introduced, you know, Moses, top of Mount Sinai, the nation of Israel around them, Ten Commandments, all the things that came with it, the first reason was for the sake of our transgressions or our sins.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the plain reading of the text.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: There is, there are some people who have a problem with the idea that God might have brought something about which did in fact increase sin.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some people like to say that God's the only purpose behind the law was simply to keep us from sinning.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's never good to murder, but then you have to ask questions like, okay, well, but the stuff about, you know, you can't plant two kinds of seed in the same field or have like linen and wool clothing mixed together, or, you know, even the rules that necessitated that people would eventually become unclean, what was the purpose of those?
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And the clear answer is simply that part of the law was to increase the amount of sin.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But the second reason that Paul provides is that it points us towards Jesus, and particularly those who were under the law.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: It pointed them towards Jesus.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It served as a placeholder until the Messiah.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says the seed in Galatians 3, but we talked about the other week that the seed language, this is going back to the promise of Abraham.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And God told him, he said, like, um, I will be your God, you will be my people, and from you will come one who is going to bless the nations.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he used that language of seed to mean a descendant.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're, we understand, we know that this is Jesus now.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so one of the functions of the law was that this promise that had been given, and they kept waiting and kept waiting and kept waiting and waiting for, it was pointing them towards this time when Jesus would come.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we know, we would say, we would use the phrase like God's redemption history, that there is this timeline that he has been working on, that we are within, and includes the end of all things, that God is carrying out his grand plan, and that Jesus arrived at the perfect time for that plan.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so until such time that Jesus did arrive, God had placed this law on the hearts and the minds of mankind so that they would be looking forward to something.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, why would they look forward to something?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because of reason number one, we were, it was revealed and in fact increased that we were sinning all the time.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And because we know who God is, we know that that is not a way to connect with Him.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: One of the main functions of the law, if you've ever enjoyed Leviticus, is all of the sacrificial system that comes with it, and all of the things that are done, a huge portion of it is simply what you must do in order to be made right with the Lord in terms of your sins.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the crux of that issue is that a sacrifice, blood must be spilled in order for you to you in order for you to be made right with him.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are all of these little things that maybe not everybody in the Old Testament could see, that it's as easy for us to, you know, with hindsight, look back upon.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: But they were waiting, even if they didn't know it, and preparing for Jesus to perfectly fulfill the law.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So these were the two reasons that Paul gave.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: First, for the sake of sin, second, to point them towards Jesus.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: The law was basically creating an attitude within a group of people that made them yell out for help.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we cannot be righteous, and we need you to save us.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: This was the purpose of the law.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: But then Paul goes into kind of a complicated topic.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, we've been complicated.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: But he says, the law was put into effect through angels by means of a mediator.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a mediator is not just for one person alone, but God is one.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So what Paul is going to do now is he's trying to explain why the law is inferior to the promise of God.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you might notice one of the words that happens at the very beginning says, why then was the law given?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was added, Paul says, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it was added to what?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was added to the promise that God had already made to Abraham, meaning the law was supplemental.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was, you could say, in effect, unnecessary.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Even though God had a purpose for it, it was not part of the original promise.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was last week's message.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says the promise outdates anything that the law brought in.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so if it's added, if it is inferior, if it has served its purpose, which is now sort of uh found and stid through the promises of God in Jesus Christ, Paul is going to make one final case.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Let me tell you why.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so he lists a couple truths about the law that show how it is inferior.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And though it might not matter to you too much, to those that Paul was talking to who had grown up Jewish, who cared about the law, who wanted to follow it with all of their heart, these things were unbelievably important for his argument.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Chart time.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says we have a covenant, right?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: You have the covenant which is an agreement between the Lord and his people.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: We can make covenants with each other, but the covenants with God are particularly special because he does not back down or change his promises.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so once he says that something's going to happen, it happens.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have one covenant which we might call the covenant of the law.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: You could also say the Mosaic covenant.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: We also have the covenant of the promise, which you could say was the Abrahamic covenant.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: But they both had an effect.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: The effect of the law was that it cursed us.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not that God desired for us to be cursed, but he gave essentially this list of commandments that we would need to follow in order to be holy.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody was ever able to fulfill it.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so the natural effect of the law was that it cursed us.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the natural effect of the blessing of the Abrahamic covenant, which was God saying, like, hey, by faith, trust in me, was blessing.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Blessings flowed from that like a new spring.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so these two things already are sort of going down different paths.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: But then Paul gets into what he said in verses 20 and 21 there.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, they were delivered by something.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in the case of the law, Paul reveals that back at Mount Sinai, you know, and we're thinking Exodus here, and Moses disappears up on uh the mountain for 40 days and forty nights, and all of Israel just sees, you know, thunder.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they hear um I always get them mixed up.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: They hear and see lightning and thunder, right?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: But they see the big cloud, they see fire on top of the mountain, they hear God's booming voice, but they can't live, they can't see beyond the cloud.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul reveals is that actually when Moses received those Ten Commandments, that angels handed them to him.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, well, that that's pretty neat.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but it's different than the covenant of promise, which was delivered by God himself.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: God spoke with Abraham.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: There was no intermediary, there was no person who went in between as a deliverer, a package delivery, like the angels did.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And though that is really neat and super cool, it means that the promise or the covenant of law was inferior to the covenant of promise.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then the other thing is that the covenant of law had a mediator.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: It had somebody whose responsibility was to carry it out and to make sure that people followed it.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we see this in the Old Testament, where God will hold Moses account for the failure of Israel to live out the law that He provided.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so Moses was the mediator of the naturally, this is why we call it the Mosaic covenant, of the law.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: But then you say, well, who is the mediator of the covenant of promise?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was God.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, to be specific, it was Jesus Christ.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: The pro covenant of promise was specifically delivered by God the Father, and it was specifically carried out by God the Son.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, Paul's point here is that God is the one who delivered it, God is the one who's carrying it out, and that is different than the law of Moses.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you're tracking with me.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not, here's a summary.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the grand story of God's redemption, the law served two primary purposes.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: First, it revealed the depth of our sin and need for a savior.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Second, it created anticipation for the Messiah, Paul's using the language, the seed of Abraham, to come and rescue his people.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, since the Messiah Christ has come and mediated the new covenant, the law is fulfilled, Jesus fulfilled it, and no longer serves the same purpose.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Another conversation is what purpose it serves today, but it is, regardless, completely different than the purpose it served in the Old Testament.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody gets that 100%.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's no questions, I'm sure.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the natural outflow of this then is you go, okay, hold on, wait.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you said one of the purposes of the law is that it reveals our sin and increases sin?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now that that can't be right.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: God brought this forth.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: He instituted this thing.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: What purpose could he fully have in having something that increased our sin?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next question should be so does that mean the law goes against and is in fact opposed to the Lord?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sin is not good, right?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing that separates us from the law.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's what condemns us.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you go, okay, so is the law evil?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is the law therefore contrary to God's promises?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: For if the law had been granted with the ability to give life, then righteousness would certainly be on the basis of the law.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin's power, so that the promise might be given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: The law has really received a beating.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's inferior, discontinued, it reveals and in fact increases sin, and it is seemingly against God's plan of faith.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we have been saying, because Paul is saying, the Lord is saying, that the law is a part of his eternal plan for humanity.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so even though it is all of those adjectives, it is inferior, it is sort of it is fulfilled now and doesn't serve the same purpose, that it was brought curses instead of blessings, all those things are true.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're not saying that it was against God's plan.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that he brought it with not just a purpose, but that it in fact led up to and then made even more beautiful Jesus Christ when he arrived on the scene.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to take you very briefly into another book of the Bible where Paul says a little bit more about this.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: In Romans chapter 7, Paul is talking about this exact same question.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: To a different group of people, he is going, okay, the law does not apply to you any longer in the way that it once did, but you're asking questions that are great, which is, then what was the point?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: He answers what was the point, and then gets to, but was it evil?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: What should we say then?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is the law sin?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: You'll notice that same exclamation.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I would not have known sin if it were not for the law.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I would not have known what it is to covet or be jealous if the law had not said, do not covet.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me every kind, um, coveting of every kind.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: For apart from the law, sin is dead.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Once I was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life again, and I died.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: The commandment that was meant for life resulted in death for me.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So then the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So Romans is so rich with the language that it uses.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: But if you ever saw the movie Gremlin, okay, and it's like, don't feed it after midnight.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is the way Paul speaks about his sin nature, okay?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying is he's like, it was like fine and nice, and I it wasn't giving me too many problems.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then something came along which revealed within me how far I had fallen, right?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like how far I had fallen short of God's gracious but holy commands for my life.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what that ended up doing is just feeding that sin nature.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden, now that I knew the things that I shouldn't be doing, we've all gone through rebellious phases.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, I have lived in rebellion, and in fact, it has increased within me.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And though the and the argument that he's making here is not that like he would have been fine if the law hadn't come along, but he says the law, like Paul had said, reveals the sin in our lives and then increases the sin because we recognize all of the things that the Lord says that we should not be doing.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: For any of you who are fancy yourself a chef or a cook, right?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know that when you read a new cookbook, that there are certain cookbooks that, you know, let's just say are for the rest of us.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how to make, not toast, but like, here's how to make a toasted sandwich, here's how to make chicken noodle soup, here's how to, you know, the kind of stuff homey and great.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then you've got the cookbooks that's like, it's from France.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Here is how to become a French chef.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all these techniques and um recipes and ingredients that you've never seen or heard from in your entire life, and it's hours-long process.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so you you try and take on one of these recipes, you know, it's telling, hey, this is how to make a consommé or a risotto or something like that, and you fail miserably at it, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not like you were suddenly unable to make that extremely difficult dish only because of the cookbook.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: It revealed within you your inability to make it by presenting you with an nearly impossible recipe, right?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says this law it reveals our inadequacy.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: It makes us return to our failures, but it does not make us righteous.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just as even if you were able to make one recipe out of that complicated book, you would be no more a French chef than I am, right?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: But yet it serves a purpose, right?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: It draws us towards something deeper and it whips up within us a desire for holiness, or at least it should.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when we go back to the text here, as Paul is speaking, he says, right, for if the law had been granted with the ability to give life, then righteousness would certainly be on the basis of the law.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is the argument that he's had for weeks now.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Won't go too much into that, but his point is like the law was never able to do what you thought it could.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody was able to fulfill it, they would be righteous.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus did that, but nobody else has.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin's power so that the promise might be given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the other things that Paul says he's about to summarize his whole argument, but he's again characterizing the law and he says one of the neat things that it did was it basically tied a lasso around every single person and all brought them under the same standard of righteousness.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it revealed that every single person in that group had fallen short.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so as it is doing all of these other things, right, it serves so many purposes, Paul's just saying its time has come and gone.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But as it serves all of these purposes and draws us deeper into God and anticipates the coming Messiah and reminds us of our sinfulness and all of these things, he's like it brought us all under one category.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: We are sinners in need of a savior.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: So one final thing I want to mention before we go on though is at no point in Paul's argument, at any point in what he is saying, does he blame the law for our failure to follow it.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: There is never a point in time where Paul says you know the sin that you have committed the ways that you have walked away from the Lord the things that you have done apart from his good pleasure and in fact the rebellion that you have caused in his kingdom you are responsible for that.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: He does not take away the blame the law being impossible to fulfill is not an excuse.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: He says you are responsible for the sin in your life and God will hold you to account for that sin at the end of your life.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: The law just makes it crystal clear that we have fallen short.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now as he continues on here I want to take one last moment.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is the last time we're going to dive out of Galatians I want to go back to Romans one more time.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: I jumped ahead of my notes we're not doing that just yet it's a paragraph later.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Tease, we will be in Romans in a moment.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, sorry let's finish this is the end of our passage in Galatians and and this serves really as just a summary of what Paul's been saying right before this faith came, remember he's talking about let's go back.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very last sentence there so that the promise might be given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe so he says the basis of faith that he's going to talk about is this new relationship that we have with Christ who has fulfilled the law and by trusting in him he is our Savior.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is the promises of God that he gave to Abraham fulfilled right before this faith came we were confined under the law imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: The law then was our guardian until Christ so that we could be justified by faith.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: But since that faith has come we are no longer under a guardian for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: As you continue on in your Bibles you can see there's an amazing statement of faith we'll get into next week about how we are all united in in the same way that the law united everybody under condemnation, under Christ, we are those who have trusted in him are all united no matter their backgrounds or their differences or their histories or the color of their skin or their checkbook or whatever it is, we are all united under Christ in the same way.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But that's for next week.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: This week we're finishing with Paul saying that a new time has come, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the time that we all live in.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are no longer under the law.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: You have a responsibility and it is good to understand it because it still has a purpose for today it's just not the same purpose that it used to have that purpose that it used to have was to draw people towards a time when the Messiah was coming.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact as Paul says it was a guardian right it protected and stewarded a group of people up and until the perfect time that Jesus would arrive.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: But here's where we go to Romans Paul says the law came along to multiply the sins or the trespass right that kind of controversial thought says it clearly but where sin multiplied look at this grace multiplied even more so that just as sin reigned in death so also grace will reign through righteousness resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you what he's saying here, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because this is what's so neat is you go, the deeper that you look into that pit of sin that is your life and my life, right, the further down you examine it, the more you are humbled and thankful by the grace of Jesus Christ, right?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is a theme that we have talked about before but if you have little concern for your sin, you have little concern for your Savior.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it is when you begin to look and examine the depth of your sin that you go wow I'm not even close.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have fallen so far short.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: If there is a marathon I have fallen down at the like one meter line right we have not made it and so Paul says here the law the beauty of the law really something that has been trod on and trampled over and over again because we shouldn't use it to think that we can become righteous but he says no what you can use it for is to recognize how beautiful Jesus is because every single person was desp in desperate need of a savior and then Christ came along did the thing that we couldn't and saved all of us.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: If any of you have ever participated in any type of like combat sports or done it, you know that like in boxing for instance there are combos that you throw.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: So like a jab jab cross or a jab uppercut hook something like that that you if you ever watch somebody who's fighting um particularly in a more technical sport they are setting up moves far and ahead of time and in fact they are doing things faints, slights they're positioning themselves in a way that they can deliver the most devastating hit at the appropriate time.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: They are not throwing individual strikes one after the other.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: They are using complicated sort of movements that are choreographed months ahead of time.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: When we think of God's plan for redemptive history it is not random things that he has done throughout time because he just went like oh no like we need to do something now.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that God has done has been planned out.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that he has done has this purpose even if something is greater or lesser or however you want to talk about it, the Lord has been working this out throughout all time.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so you say what purpose does the law have the Lord brought it about so that we would understand Jesus more fully right just because they were sacrificing bulls which pointed towards a time when we would have one sacrifice, okay, it doesn't mean that it was wrong or evil simply that the Lord was bringing them along to this point in time where when Jesus died on the cross they would go oh so all of that stuff as we now look back at the Old Testament and go, this sounds like Jesus what they're doing.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like his sacrifice this sounds like the reason that he came and died for all of us God goes yeah that's why I put it there is because it made it obvious and then to us who have the we are the beneficiaries of God's redemption being revealed his plan we go back and go, oh man Lord like your design for this was so beautiful and how you brought everything together under one.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if I were to throw you in a ring though with a boxer who knew what they were doing your first response is going to be to put your hands up by your face or it should be or else you're going to get smoked.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody likes getting hit in the face not a single person.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not fun doesn't feel good when we look at the law and we examine our sin it's like getting punched in the teeth it hurts it can be embarrassing it um is can be scandalous when we think of the things that we have done and the boldness that we have had to rebel against God.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: It is one of the greatest hurdles in coming to faith in Christ that you admit that you are in need of a Savior because you have fallen so far short and that you are willing to submit to him.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: But this was the purpose of the law to break down our defenses to make us recognize the need that we had and ultimately to make us draw closer to Christ and so I'll just finish with this when Paul says we are no longer under a guardian for through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus you have to keep in mind that we are no longer prisoners we are no longer under the condemnation of the law if we have trusted in Christ.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: But there are very very clearly two camps that you can reside in.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can either even though we are not the world is not necessarily needing to follow the Mosaic law it still reveals how far short we have come.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately everybody who has not trusted in Christ sits in condemnation.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: They are deserving of God's righteous judgment.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way out of that is by trusting in Christ.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this has been the message this is the message of most sermons and this has been the message every single week as we have walked through Galatians but the point that I want to just hammer home this morning is that it is an appreciation for Christ that comes from the law and in fact your recognition of your sin.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that if you want to draw deeper in your relationship with the Lord, you cannot have an attitude that thinks of yourself as being righteous.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: You have to recognize your sin you have to call out your sin you have to repent of your sin even still knowing that Jesus forgives it you need to be aware of it because it will draw you deeper into fellowship with him.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: It will make you more humble and it will make you more thankful for what he has done on top of all of the other things that the cross represents right to be a prideful Christian is an oxymoron.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: There is no idea that we can walk forward in fellowship with the Lord and say I'm doing pretty good.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: The law eliminates that possibility and so what was the purpose of the law of you reading even the Old Testament to draw us deeper into faith in Christ let's pray Heavenly Father we come before you God we are woefully inadequate to be able to understand and to understand Lord your plan for redemption's history yet Lord you have revealed it to us peace by peace by peace.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: And God what we see is a magnificent and beautiful plan that you have created from eternity past before we were ever here.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Lord knowing that we would rebel, you have brought forth the law and promise so that we would understand the depth of our sin and what Jesus has saved us from.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Lord we thank you for these things.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that yes Lord we are not under the law any longer we are not held to the standard of the Mosaic law and all of its statutes but God you still desire for us to be holy and we still fall short of it every day.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: By the power of your Spirit Lord would you reveal within us the areas of our lives which continue like mine so often do to fall short of your standard.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then God do not leave us there as you never do but draw us into the truth of the cross that we would as Paul says in Romans Lord that grace would be magnified as our sins are and that we would see grace even more and more.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lord you cover our sins that we don't even know of and we just thank you for this.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Lord finally I thank you for Christ for without him we would all be condemned we would all be stuck we would all be lost and I thank you that he has provided a way out for all of us.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's in his name we pray.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Amen