Until The Seed Would Come
Galatians 3:15-23 · Vern Peterman · Aug 12, 2007
Galatians (2007), No. 17
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926036173663

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Thank you for reading that for us, Courtney. That was a little more than we usually take on, isn't it? But anyway, we will go through it. I wanted to let you know we announced some supplemental handouts for last week and ran out of them, so we have additional copies available if you want to take advantage of those on the cabinet to the right as you exit the room. Okay, now. Last week we let you know that we wanted to give you the big picture, and we did that by telling you you were right here. We're going to kind of proceed along that same line here today.

Summarizing the passage of the last two weeks, we said in Galatians 3.6-9 that Paul drew upon God's dealings with Abraham to show that we are justified, and here's the emphasis, only by faith, and then in verses 10-14 that it is impossible, the flip side, it is impossible to be justified by works of the law. Let's clarify justified. Justified is not making really good excuses for yourself. It is being declared righteous by God. That's the intent here. As we put it before, you cannot nail jello to the wall. You cannot get blood out of a turnip. and you cannot go from the law to righteousness. It can't happen. That's Paul's point in the passage we saw last week. Now, we're going to step into this week's passage, looking at the big picture, and it looks like this. He has four key points that we're going to be looking at in the passage that Courtney just read for us here. The first point is this.

The seed promised to Abraham was, in fact, Christ the Lord. Christ the Lord. We'll take a look more at that. The law of Moses was never meant to replace, substitute for, or set aside God's promises to Abraham. Third point, God's promises to Abraham were conveyed and fulfilled in a way that was superior to, above the law. Better than. And we'll see the details on that.

And finally, the law was not the ultimate and final revelation from God, it was a bridge to what is next. And we'll finish off with that point as it's the fourth point that Paul makes here in the passage. Alright, now, let's take a look at verse 15. And this also starts page 1 on your handout here. Alright.

Paul was using the typical practices of human relations. And what was he doing here? What he was explaining was that if we have an agreement between two parties, and once that agreement is reached, the idea is that that's carried to fulfillment. It is not proper for one person later on to come and say, hey, you know how we agreed to that?

I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do this instead. That doesn't set too well if that happened to you, right? And so that's not the way things are done. One party in an agreement doesn't come and just arbitrarily say, I'm going to do this differently. The agreement is to be carried out as it's agreed between the two parties. Now, so this momentous agreement was not set aside just by somebody kind of having an afterthought. Oh, I want to do this instead or a whim or anything of the sort. Paul is saying this. Why?

Because the covenant with Abraham was before the Law of Moses, one as it was prior, and the Law of Moses didn't come to replace or set aside anything that was in God's promises to Abraham. The Law of Moses was a two-way arrangement. You will be blessed if you do these things. With Abraham, God said, you will be blessed because I promised it. I will do these things. I will follow through on these things. Period. Nothing on the part of Abraham.

Verse 16 here. As we look at verse 16, we see that Paul wrote here that Genesis 22.18 was referring specifically to Christ.

That is also implied as Genesis 18.18 lays out.

But specifically laid out in Genesis 22.18. In Genesis 18-18 it goes like this, Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation and in him all the nations, in the Greek Old Testament that's ethnos, the ethnic ones.

We get our word ethnic from that. All the nations of the earth will be blessed. That includes us, right? All the nations of the earth will be blessed. Genesis 22-18, and this is the one that Paul is particularly pointing to, God said to Abraham, and in your seed, that is, Christ, Paul is saying that that points to, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

Here are the four seeds of Abraham in Scripture. Not those. That's not the kind of seed we're talking about. First is the natural seed. The physical remnant. Those who are physical descendants of Abraham. That's the first kind of seed that's referred to here. The second one is a spiritual natural seed, oftentimes called the spiritual remnant. That's something that we actually touched on when we were studying through Isaiah. And it was also touched upon in Romans as we were going through that elective.

And we will see it again as we study Galatians 6.16.

This is the Jews who believe. That's the simple way of putting it. The Jews who believe. Simply being a physical descendant is not enough. So this is the Jews who believe. That's the second kind of seed. The third kind is Gentile believers. That's referred to, as we saw in Galatians 3, 6-9, we as Gentile believers are the spiritual seed of Abraham. So, do you go around thinking, I'm of the seed of Abraham? Well, whether you think it or not, that's what Scripture lays out.

We're going to see that again in verse 29 in the same chapter. Alright, so that's us. And then there is the singular ultimate seed. That's the kind that he's talking about here. The fourth kind of seed of Abraham, and that's Jesus Christ. Him alone. He is the one singular seed. The one seed of Abraham that is intended in this passage here.

Okay, now, verse 17 here. Paul is saying this. He's laying out a principle here and he has a timeline. So I want to kind of get clear. What timeline is he talking about here? This is also on page one of your handout. Start with God made these promises that we've been talking about that we just showed part of here when we showed the passages in Genesis. He made those promises to Abraham. They were one-way promises. They didn't depend on what Abraham did as to whether or not God would fulfill it. All Abraham could do is believe it. All Abraham could do is believe. That was made about 2000 BC, so 4,000 years ago. That's a while ago, right? That's even longer than I remember.

Isaac was the next one in line there, right? Isaac was also given those promises. Those promises were repeated to Isaac, so that Isaac also was the recipient of those promises and an heir of those promises. Then the promises were repeated to Jacob before he went into or as he was going into Egypt.

From there, it was 430 years until the law was given as the Jews were coming out of Egypt. That's what he's talking about here. And the law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. God gave the promise to Abraham, He repeated it to Isaac. He repeated it again to Abraham and Isaac's heir, Jacob. As he went into the promised land 430 years later, the law was given.

That didn't touch, invalidate, change, influence at all the promises God made to Abraham. The promises God made to Abraham, repeated to Isaac, repeated to Jacob, were not to be changed and not conditioned upon anything that Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob did. Okay, verse 18 here. We've got an if-then, right?

If the inheritance was actually based on our fulfilling the law, like this is what the legalists were claiming, the Judaizers who were going to the believers in Galatia, that's why we have this book by that name, The Judaizers were going to the believers in Galatia and saying, in order for you to get that inheritance, you've got to fulfill the law. If that was actually the case, then it's not based on the promise. The promises that God made to Abraham, I guess they all get swept aside. You've got to fulfill the law. If that was correct, if the legalists were right, that would be the case. But there's a problem with this claim. What's the problem with this claim? The problem is this. God has in fact given the inheritance to Abraham and Abraham's heirs by means of his promise to Abraham.

The law is not involved. The promises to Abraham do not involve the law. The promises to Abraham do not depend on what Abraham did. They do not depend on what Jacob did. They don't depend on what you and I do. The promises are there. They're unilateral. God promised and it doesn't matter what we do. All we can do is believe.

It's entirely by grace. That's something that comes out here. This word, granted, This word granted, that King James has gave, means grace given entirely free, completely, 100% by grace. Just like it is at all the stores around town, right? No. No, not by that at all. This is unlike anything you'll see at the stores around town. This is entirely, 100% by grace, we can't even hope to touch. what the Lord has promised here, that we have entirely by faith, faith alone.

Now, and this grace-given promise, the way it's given in this Word is in the perfect tense. Now, I don't want you to get perfectly tense about that. What do we mean by that? It's a completed past action, ongoing results into the future. It was given permanently. It was given, once given, perpetually valid, continually.

The Lord is not giving a promise and saying, whoop, I think I changed my mind. Okay, are you saved by faith? Well, not so fast. The Lord is not giving us a promise that he's pulling back on, or he's not pulling the trapdoor on. He's not going to look at Vern and say, well Vern, you blew it, I guess you're done. None of that. Careful here.

So, what is this inheritance? Now, you may be thinking that's a good question, because a really big inheritance would be a nice thing to get, right? Like a call this afternoon, you're getting a really big inheritance. I mean, really big. Well, we need to find out what inheritance he's talking about here. He's going to go on through the end of Chapter 5, so we're not done with this question. So, here's what he says. What is the inheritance? It's not inherit ants. It's not inherit ants. It's inheritance.

Now, the inheritance that Paul wrote about is, and this means to be justified, right? To be justified, to be declared righteous by God is entirely, totally, 100% by faith. Not something we earn. It's not just something we learn. It is by faith. It's to be believed. And it includes everything else that goes along with it. That is critical. It's not just, okay, I've got eternal life insurance. I'm not going to hell. Well, that's great. It is everything else that goes along with it.

We are blessed abundantly. We'll talk about that some more. Now, what is he saying here? We've been declared righteous. We've been identified with Christ. We've been redeemed. from the law, and these are only the things he's covered so far. We've got more to get to, and we'll talk about that in the weeks to come here. It is all entirely by faith.

We can't earn it. We can't pay God back. We can't say, hey God, you know, if you'll save me by faith, I'll do this and this for you. No. Can't do that. Doesn't work that way. It's entirely by faith, by grace. He's going to be coming back to this issue of inheritance again and again and again. So it's not just a small item that he's going to talk about and move on. He's going to continue to talk about what that inheritance is and how important it is. Now, verse 19. We've got a question here.

If God's promises to Abraham have it all over the Law of Moses, if they're just so much better, why? Did God give the Law of Moses at all? Why bother? Why didn't He just say, hey, I've got promises to Abraham, that's good enough, and we'll just leave it there? Good question. The Law was added on top of the promises to Abraham, but not to replace them. So, it was added because of transgressions means, and don't worry, there's no math involved. First of all, the word transgressions, which is a word we don't use a whole lot, means violations. That's the intent. Transgressions means violations. Got that? Now, there are at least three, there appears to be, at least three biblical purposes and outcomes for God to have given the law of Moses. And in fact, any other principle of law.

Let's take a look at them. One is a restraining and training. We're going to be looking at that here in the passage right ahead of us next Sunday. And so there's a restraining and training aspect of the law, part one. The next part, a revealing and a measuring.

You might have a sense, boy, I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. The law puts an absolute measure on it. This is right, this is wrong. It spells it out. It measures it. It gives it definition. That's the second purpose. The third one, and this may seem kind of amazing, Romans 7, 8 is provoking. The law at once restrains, but it also stimulates.

Think about this. I'm going to tell you, don't you dare, not now, not for the rest of today, don't you dare think of a purple hippopotamus. Don't. How are you doing? How you doing with that? Now don't think about a purple hippopotamus. Don't even think about it. What'd the law just do? My very telling you that, you probably wouldn't have thought a purple hippopotamus the rest of your life. But now that I've told you, that's certainly at least what you're going to think of right here. The law has that effect. It brings things to mind. that you wouldn't otherwise even think of.

There's a little cartoon that I saw once that shows this couple and they're standing at the edge of an urban street and there's nobody else on the street, no other cars or anything. There's just a sign next to them that says, absolutely no machete juggling. And one person turns to the other and says, suddenly I have this overwhelming urge to juggle machetes.

It's the nature of the law, isn't it? It stimulates and stirs up the exact thing that it prohibits. Alright, third point about the law. Now, his next point in verse 20 is, now a mediator is not for one party only where God is only one. What's he talking about here?

God is making a promise directly to Abraham. Notice there was no angels in between. Certainly angels were involved at times with Abraham, but these promises were directly to him. Right directly to Abraham. There isn't any mediator or go-between with that. When God made the promise directly to Abraham, it was one-on-one.

That's a superior arrangement, is Paul's point. superior arrangement to having a law where there was Moses and even angels acting as mediator to bring the law to the Jews. There was a go-between. It says directly to God is a far better arrangement. That's a superior arrangement. That stands above the one with the mediator. Verse 21, the law of Moses didn't negate or replace the promises that God made to Abraham. The law of Moses was not there to have any impact at all upon the promises to Abraham. None whatsoever. The law certainly, as we've seen, had its purposes.

Some of them are even a little bit difficult when you look at them. But it could never impart life. It says thou shalt not kill, which meant thou shalt not murder. What would happen to you if you murdered? Well, you'd die. How does that impart life? It doesn't. The law simply cannot impart life. It cannot impart righteousness. It just simply doesn't have that ability. We needed, we human beings needed desperately an unconditional Exceedingly gracious gift from God. Now, when I say gift, I mean gift.

You know, you get a Christmas present or a birthday present or something like that, maybe for an anniversary, and there's a little card attached to it. You'd feel kind of miffed if you opened that up and there was a bill, right? Or here's your schedule for paying it off or working it off. That would really kind of irk you, right? A gift needs to be a gift, and that's exactly what we need, because this demands grace that is amazing, astounding, immense, to the place there's not even the slightest hope we could ever pay God back. That's the kind of gift it takes.

Verses 22 and 23 here. But Scripture, and I want to read through this here because I want us to kind of get the thought, but Scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now listen, given to those who believe. Free gift if you believe. That's a key thing. Given to those who believe. You may recall from Romans, for the wages of sin is death, the free gift is eternal life. If you want eternal life, that's absolutely free. But if you want death, oh, well, that's different. You've got to work for it. Yeah, how about that?

Key point, the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up." Here's this word, shut up, and this is not telling you to be quiet, although it's sure appreciated while I'm trying to talk. Anyway, "...to the faith which was later to be revealed."

So why does he talk about this word shut up in these verses? And not only that, notice he does it twice, once in each of these verses here. Brings it up again. Why is that such a big deal and why is it a good thing? So how is it that being shut up ends up being a good thing? It goes like this.

The word translated shut up, and I'm going to use kind of a picture and take a slight detour. Can you handle that? The word shut up was used in enclosing fish in the trammel nets. There's a kind of a diagram of how those were used. on the Sea of Galilee. And there's a passage in Luke 5 where that ends up showing up. We'll take a look at that in a minute. The fish were actually totally enclosed and trapped by this net. They had no escape option. There was no way to get out. For once they were enclosed, shut up in this net.

Here's how it went in Luke chapter 5, starting with the first verse there. It happened that while the crowd was pressing around him and listening to the word of God, he, that is Christ, was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, and that's another name for the Sea of Galilee, and he saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake, but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. Let me give you a little bit of background. A lot of times we'll kind of picture these disciples doing their fishing during the day.

They didn't. That was very rarely done and only under certain circumstances. The typical thing was to fish all night. When you head off to work, you do it at nighttime. Why? Because they didn't have nets like we do now with clear netting. So the fish could see the nets. The only way you could make sure that the nets weren't visible to the fish was to fish at night. So they would fish all night. And then, in the morning, when the sun came up, then they would go ashore, take their fish in, and repair the nets.

Because the net material would oftentimes get ripped up, torn, things of that sort. So, that's what they were doing. So, when Jesus was asking the disciples to take part in this, they had already been fishing all night. They were dead tired. And all they were really needing to do was just get the nets fixed. get them dried out, get everything ready so that they were ready to go the next night.

Verses 3 and 4 goes like this. And he got into one of the boats, which was Simon's. Okay, so now here's Simon, who's been fishing all night, and he's dead tired. Okay? and asked him to put out a little away from the land. So here's Simon. He says, man, I'm dead tired. I've been fishing all night and my nets are over there. I need to, you know, this is getting to be too much.

But what did happen? He asked him to put out a little away from the land and he sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Now think about this.

All right, we've been fishing all night. We're really tired, but we fish at night. Why? Because that's the only time when you can put the nets down and the fish don't see them. So what's Jesus asking them to do? After you've fished all night, and you did it at night because you don't want the fish to see the nets, now Jesus is telling them, go out there and drop the nets down right in broad daylight where the fish can see them. Do you see the miracle coming? This is the miracle, that they can fish in broad daylight. Let down your nets for a catch.

So Simon answered, and said, Master, we worked hard all night, and I'm sure they did. And this is, boy, this makes it even tougher, and caught nothing. We're fishermen, we're professional fishermen, we've worked hard, we know what we're doing, we didn't catch anything. And it was night, that was the best time to catch anything, if you're going to catch anything.

And what happens? They caught nothing. But I will do as you say and let down the nets. You know, just all humor, you know. We'll go ahead and do it. And when they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish. That's the word enclosed there. That's the word shut up in the Galatians passage.

They enclosed a great quantity of fish and their nets began to break. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats so that they began to sink. What they got there was about three quarters of a ton of fish in one catch, in broad daylight, which isn't supposed to happen at all. And that's about two weeks work, all in one catch, in broad daylight, with one net dropping after you've worked all night and are really tired. So the Lord compensated them for their having Let him use the boat abundantly and miraculously.

Now, getting back to this, these fish are being shut up. They're being enclosed in this net. That's the word that Paul used here to describe enclosing. Why does he use that word? The fish are trapped in the same way that Paul says that people are trapped, hedged in and enclosed and contained by the law, unable to get out. held in by the law in the same way that the Lord intended blessing for these disciples who had worked all night, these disciples who let Him use their boat for some teaching. The Lord intended to use the law to bless as well. Let's take a look at that. As with the disciples and the fishermen on that miraculous day in Galilee, the Lord shuts things up for people so that He can show great mercy and even bless them. Can they see their need for me? Can they see that they cannot be righteous all of their own? Can they see my character and their shortfalling? Can they see how desperately they need a Savior?

Here's what he says, but Scripture has shut up everyone and closed them like the fish under sin. At the start of verse 23, but before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up. Who's the we? The Jews under the law. Being shut up to the faith. Shut up, enclosed entirely, which was later to be revealed.

The law was to prepare them for the gospel that we have come to believe here. Look at the constraining here, the limiting. that we see in these parts of these verses. That's what the law does. The law is like the fishnet that encircles and grabs all these fish to trap them. There's only one way out. And we've been given a way out that the fish don't have. And that way is Christ. God had a purpose in it. He had a purpose in the law. The law gave us no humanly visible way to comply and live.

We look at the law, and like we said last week, if at first you don't succeed, you're sunk. If at first you don't succeed, you're done. That's the law. None of this try, try again. Sorry, you're already over. The law serves that. It's only with the Lord that we have a way out. It's only by grace. By faith alone, most graciously given.

We see in this passage also not just two places that say, shut up, but also two places that refer to faith. It so happens that in the original text in the Greek there, both of them are the faith, the definite article. Paul meant here not just to refer to faith in a general sense, but specifically to faith that is the set of teachings and doctrines specific to the church under grace. the set of teachings and doctrines that we have under grace, entirely by faith, to us in the Church. You have in your handout on page 3, and we have here a listing, it is not an exhaustive listing, of places where the faith in the New Testament refers to a specific set of teachings, a specific set of doctrines, including the places we see here.

Those aren't listed in this passage. What is he doing here? We have the setup. In the verses that lie just ahead of us here, we're going to see that the law is just yesterday. Why? The law can't even make one righteous. If someone could follow it, if, remember we said last week, that's a big if. If someone could follow it, yeah, you could be blessed. But good luck is hardly enough. The law's true purpose, the reason God gave it, was fulfilled before the church even began.

What he's going to tell us in the verses ahead here is how phenomenally, super abundantly, we've been blessed. The word that Paul uses in Ephesians is unfathomably blessed. Massively blessed. And he's going to just reveal portions of that in the passage that we'll see ahead. The position that we have in Christ is astounding. The grace is absolutely amazing.

That's why he would tell them also in Ephesians, he would tell them that you have been raised up with Christ and seated in the heavenly places. and that the grace is so phenomenal that it will take rolling ages of eternity for Him to reveal all that grace to us. That's right, rolling ages.

So I don't have to tell you all about grace this morning. Isn't that good news? You have on page 4 of your handout the expanded and explained. I'll let you read that on your own if you care to. I won't go through it this morning because it's too much. But I'll let you take a look at it. But I will have us take a look at this.

Just beginning to ponder the blessings that we have in Christ. These blessings are untouchable in the heavenlies. As Paul presented it in Ephesians 1, 3. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, not just some you can count on one hand. No, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.

It's a done deal. And that doesn't depend on how you behave. It's all on believing. And believing alone. Just like Paul has been talking about with Abraham. By faith. That's all. We can't earn it. We can't work for it. We can't get more and more blessings. No. You already, as a believer, if you're a believer here this morning, You already have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

He's begun to tell us what those are. He told us already we've been redeemed from the law, bought out from the slave market of sin. We have seen, and we'll see again in the book of Galatians, that we've been identified with Christ. This is phenomenal good news.

We've been identified with Christ in His crucifixion. If you're a believer here this morning, you were there when the nails were being put in. You were with Him, not just watching. You were crucified with Him. And believe it or not, that's really good news. You were also buried with Him, Scripture says. You were raised with Him. You were ascended with Him and seated with Him.

Those are phenomenal blessings, and that's just the start. That's just the beginning. But He'll be touching upon that in the passage that we'll see ahead of us here. Let's go to Lord in Prayer. Lord, we thank You. How marvelously, how amazingly You've blessed us. And what is even more astounding, there's nothing we can do to enhance it, to change it, to earn it, to be worthy of it. You have simply blessed us. All we can do is believe. We thank You for that marvelous blessing. Teach us, not just in mind, but in heart, what that means. In Jesus' name, Amen.