What Am I Saying?
Galatians 3:16-18 · Mike Doyle · Jun 16, 2019
Galatians (2018-20), No. 26
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926191515525

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

So we've been working through the verses, and thanks, Jim, for reading, putting them in context. We looked at God's provision for justification by faith, faith in Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. And we also looked at the gift of the Holy Spirit. Last week, we talked about that, that was given both to the Jews and the Gentiles, and doing this before the Mosaic Law was given. So the premise is, is that the law cannot make void that which is done by God prior to giving of the law. So Jim read the verses, so I'm not gonna read them. But last week we talked a little bit about man's covenant. And Bob Lockwood came up to me and he said, gee, I feel like I was in a contracts class. If you're a banker or a realtor, you have to go to class all the time to keep your license. I went to contract classes every two years.

The thing interesting about contracts is that a covenant is a contract. and they can be what is known as unilateral or bilateral. If it's bilateral, it means you have two parties, and both of them agree to do something, and they put it in writing, draw it all up, and sign it. Notary public puts a stamp on it, so it's what is known, and money is given, or something of promise is given. to make it real. And that's kind of been man's way of doing things forever.

A unilateral contract would be one in which there are two parties involved, but only one is gonna do something. The other party is just gonna be the receiver of the action and does not necessarily have to even sign it. but they are like an inheritance. If I left my 15 bucks to my son, John, he doesn't have to sign it. I made the promise.

Well, this contract or covenant that God made with Abraham is unilateral. He did it all on his own with all of his own. He's the one that put the elements in the contract. And he said to Abraham, this is what I'm gonna do. And he never required Abraham to do anything. I don't think we realize that if Abraham didn't believe him, he was still gonna do it. The problem would be is that Abraham would not have been accounted righteous because he didn't believe God.

But God was still gonna do it. He was still gonna do it because he said he was, okay? So I thought, first of all, let's look at the elements of this contract or this covenant that was made with Abraham. The first part was that it was unconditional in every part, every part of it for man. And the second part of it is that he alone declares, Jehovah declared that I will do this for you, mankind, but I'm gonna do it through Abraham. And being unconditional, it can't be broken by man. If I made a contract, a unilateral contract with Nick, he couldn't do anything to break it because he's just the receiver. He didn't sign anything or agree to anything.

It's restated in a couple of places, not only to Abraham, but also in Genesis 26, three through five, the same covenant was, or contract was restated to Isaac. And in Genesis 35, 10, it was restated to Jacob. God reiterated it and reiterated it, and it reaches on into eternity because it's an everlasting contract or covenant.

Now, first element was, I will make you a great nation. I hope you can see that. This feature is fulfilled in the posterity of Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and it's done through Abraham's seed. The second element is I will bless you. which is fulfilled both in earthly and heavenly riches. You know, we are Abraham's spiritual sons by faith.

Ephesians 1.3 says we've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly through Christ Jesus. That promise of being blessed was in the Abrahamic covenant. You shall be a blessing was another element of it. No name. No name is more honored in scripture other than Jesus Christ than Abraham. He's the most honored man in scripture outside of Christ. Fourth element, you shall be a blessing. The blessing extends to Abraham's physical seed through Isaac and Jacob and down to the Gentiles. We've talked about that in verses 13 and 14. This next part is interesting.

I will bless them that bless you, and I will curse them who curses you. Now, it's been observed that this has been a divine principle that has been in play with Israel ever since this time. It deals with what God telling Abraham, this is what I'm gonna do with your posterity, which is the nation of Israel. In Deuteronomy 30, verse 7, the Lord says, the Lord, your God, will inflict on all these curses in your enemies and on those who hate you, who persecute you. And he repeats it in Isaiah 14, Zechariah 14, and Matthew 25. So my question has always been about this curse. Is that in play today?

I think a lot of people think it is, and I think a lot of what we do, our country does in terms of supporting Israel has to do with this issue of the covenant, that we don't want to be cursed by God, and so we're gonna support Israel. I'm not so sure because we're in the age of grace and Israel isn't the focus of everything that God does on the earth now. It will be again after we're raptured out of here. But even so, I would rather be in a position where I was blessing Israel than cursing him.

Element five, I'll bless them that bless you, and I will curse them that curse you. And then six, in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed. That's some statement that he says to this man, Abraham, in you, all of the families of the earth which will be blessed. And that has to do with the seed, and the seed is Christ. Not only is Christ the physical seed of Abraham, but he's the spiritual seed.

And it contemplates everything that Christ was going to do when he came. And if you have any comprehension of the work of Christ on the cross, it accrues to every single person on the earth. Everybody. Because he dealt with issues like sin and the law that accrues to anybody who believes.

I will give you the land. Now it's interesting, if you go back and take a look at the land that God intends to give to Israel, it far exceeds anything that they have ever occupied, even after the time they went across and in to occupy the land. When they came out of Egypt, it extends from the Nile River all the way to the Euphrates. It's about 10 times as much property as what they have ever, And no wonder the Palestinians fight so hard.

If they're reading the same Bible I read, they know one of these days they're gonna get evicted. So in verse 17, in verse 17, it says, what I'm saying is this. The law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant. previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise. The words here, this I say, takes up a further part of the argument that Paul is making to explain, kind of in addition to what he's already explained in verse 16. And he sort of inferred to it in verse 16, but now he gets very clear about what he's talking about.

And where did he get this idea of 430 years? I think he got it from Exodus 12. Now the time that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. So Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's son Joseph goes into Egypt and his family comes in there and for 430 years they're there and they end up in slavery. So it's really the lapse of time from the covenant made to Abraham and the law that was given to Moses. That's a lot of time, 430 years.

It implies also that the law might be something new and something different which could not therefore be an element forming a part of the promise because 430 years, the time frame is really interesting because it can't contribute to what was originally done. I would say that the longer the covenant is enforced as alone, the method that God operates in saving people, the more impressive is Paul's statement about 430 years. If he'd have given a law right afterwards, let's say 25 or 30 years, or when Abraham was circumcised, it was just a few years after, if he had given the law then, it would be really easy to misconstrue that, well, the law's part of the covenant, the original covenant, but it's not. 430 years, you know, if I had a contract with you and it went for 430 years and then I was gonna change it at the end of that time, you'd say, wait a minute, that's not part of the original deal. So 430 years had passed. God was saving men on the basis of faith without works, actually from the time of Adam. I was surprised, I remember, when I first, dawned on me that I think God saved Adam.

You know, as Adam, he's responsible for this mess we all live in. And we, this morning, we were talking about the curse and that kind of thing in the Romans class. And what's interesting is, is that we groan and we moan waiting for the redemption of our bodies and the revealing of the sons of God so that this creation can be released from the vanity that it was submitted to. And I always thought, well, that's a pretty big deal and God isn't gonna forgive Adam, but he did because he offered Adam a solution.

And the solution was those skins. You remember Adam took it upon himself to cover his sinfulness by plants, philodendrons, whatever they were. And God came to him and said, look, those aren't good enough. Put these skins on that came from a slain animal. So God offered him a covering for his sins and he accepted it. So I think he's saved. because he believed that what God gave him solved his sinful problem, at least covered his sins.

So, now, what's interesting is that the law is in force from Moses to Christ 1,500 years. Imagine that. The law was given to Moses 1,500 years before Christ came, and when Christ came, he rescinded the whole thing by going to the cross. It was over then.

But the Judaizers, which were his big problem in Galatia, were not only attempting to retain the Mosaic institution for the Jews, but they were trying to impose them on the Gentiles, to whom the law was never given. So this is what Paul's fighting against, and he's really serious about this, because he understands it better than anybody. So the next question I have, which sort of came into my mind was when.

And how did God ratify the covenant with Abraham? You know, contracts and covenants aren't enforceable unless they've been ratified. So I spent some time looking up a lot of it just to see, and I'm not gonna read all of this, or I didn't print out all of the Genesis 15, but it's interesting because there's this conversation in there between Abraham and the Lord, and the Lord came, After these days the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying, Don't fear, Abram, I'm a shield to you. Your reward shall be great. And Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me since I'm childless?

The heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. So he had an heir. Who is this Eleazar guy? He must be a guy that Abraham entered into a contract with. Say, I'm gonna give you everything and I don't have any children. So obviously he wasn't celebrating Father's Day. So Abraham said, since you have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir. So this Eleazar must have been born in his house.

Then the word of the Lord came to him saying, this man will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir. And I'm thinking, Abraham is thinking this over. He took him outside and said, now look towards the heavens and count the stars. If you are able to count them, he said, so shall your descendants be. Imagine Abraham has no children and God takes him outside and says, check out the stars there, Abram. That's how many descendants you're gonna have from your body.

Now, This is what I love about Abraham. He says, Abram believed the Lord and the Lord reckoned to him as righteousness. And then he said, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees to give you this land to possess it. Now watch what Abram does. This is Mr. Faith, right? He says, oh Lord, how will I know that I will possess it? What happened to the faith here? In other words, I need to know. In other words, how are you going to ratify the contract? That's what he's saying.

He said to him, bring me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. Then he brought all of these things to him, and watch what he did. He cut them in two, He laid one half on this side and one half on this side, but he didn't cut the birds in two, okay?

And birds of prey came down upon the carcasses and Abram drove them away. Now, when the sun was gone down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him. And God said to Abram, know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in the land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed 400 years. He's telling Abram about the Jews living in Egypt being oppressed for 400 years.

But I will also judge the nation whom you will serve, they will serve, and thereafter I will bring, they will come out from, with many possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace and you will be buried in good old days. Then in the fourth generation there will return here for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

Now here's the verification. And it came about when the son had said, that it was very dark and behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch, which passed between the two pieces, these pieces. And on that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying, to your descendants, I have given this land from the river Egypt as far as the great river of the Euphrates. So what God has done here, I mean, you think about it. The way he ratified this contract was to slay all these animals, put one on one side and one on the other, and walk down the middle of them.

And I guess they did that in ancient times to ratify a contract. Now, I sold a lot of real estate in my time, and I've never had to do that. But the contracts were ratified. They were ratified because the people agreed, They were signed and money, a promise was made. Earnest money is a promise.

And some people even went so far as to record the contract. What recording does is give what is known as constructive notice. If you and I enter in a contract and I want to make sure that you don't violate it, I go down to the clerk and recorder's office and I record it. What have I done? I've just made it public knowledge. ratified a contract. You can't come back later and say, well, I didn't really agree to that. Oh, yeah, you did. It's right there in the record, okay?

So in Hebrews 6.13, Hebrews 6.13, he says to, the writer of Hebrews says, and when God made a promise to Abraham, since he couldn't swear, by one greater, he swore by himself. God said, I swear, this is what I'm gonna do. And I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you. And so having patiently waited, he, Abraham, obtained the promise.

And then he explains a little bit that men swear by something greater than themselves. I would never say I swear by myself. I'd always pick something higher that had more authority than I have. he gave an oath as confirmation of his end. In the same way, God desiring even more to show to the heirs of promise the unchangeableness of his purpose, he interposed with an oath saying that the two unchangeable things which is impossible for God to lie, that's one thing, and the other thing is We who take refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.

So what do we have? We have a promise, and we have his oath. And the oath of God is because it is from God, it's worth it. We say, well, this promise he made to me. Now, if you think about everything that we study, especially in this church, that has to do with the epistles, There's a thing that we talk about all the time called positional truth. And it's a statement by the writers of the epistles that this is true of you now.

As an example, I mentioned in Ephesians 1.3 that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. Is that true? And everybody goes, yeah, it's true. Well, how do I know it's true?

Because God said it. And God can't lie. He gave us His oath. And He can't swear by anybody higher than Himself. If He says, I'm positioned in the heavenlies, if I've been crucified, buried, and resurrected, and I'm seated, is that true? Yeah, it's true. Why? It's only true because of one reason, because He said it. He said it. And Abraham believed what God told him. I'm, and you believe what he tells us about our position.

Positional truth is incredibly important to us as believers because it tells us not only what we have, but it tells us where we are positioned and who we are. Who we are is really critical. We spend too much time looking in the mirror, thinking, well, gee, I don't see anything spiritual about me. Well, that's because look in the Word of God and not the mirror.

You're better off. So, When God says something in the Old Testament or gives a promise, and I've had a lot of preachers say to me, well, you know, we live by God's promises, and I always disagree with that. Because can you tell me one thing that the epistles have told you that's true of you that's a promise?

There's hope. We've been given hope about, we talked this morning about the revealing of the sons of God and the earth being released from, from its subjection to vanity, but I'm already positioned in Christ in the heavenlies. That's not a hope. That's not a promise.

It's a fact. The Jews and Abraham operated on promises. We operate on facts. What the Judaizers are trying to do is to get somebody to live under a law system, which means unless you perform, there aren't any promises, and there certainly are no facts. It's not a grace system. It has to be a grace system.

So the hope set before us in Hebrews 6, 19, in Hebrews 6, 19, the hope we have is an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, one which enters within the veil, you're in the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. The hope that's set before us as believers transcends all that could be for any of the saints in the Old Testament, way beyond more anything that they were promised.

So the security is enhanced and crowned by the one who is God no less man, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's 100% God and he's 100%. The Jews would have called him Jehovah Messiah the Savior, who's gone back to heaven for us, but you know what? Paul tells us he took us with him. And he's made purification of sins and instituted eternal redemption. In him and his work, Paul is made sure. What's interesting about us as believers is that the rights of God are resolved by His grace alone.

They're not resolved by a lost system. Sin's already been judged. so has to vindicate the insult against God about His majesty and His holiness. Do you realize that the big problem with sin was that it was an insult to God? It insulted His holiness and His righteousness, and only Christ could take care of that insult. Now God can be merciful, it can flow freely, And it's based on a righteousness that's already been given. It's no longer thought in the flesh as it would be under a law system by a guilty man.

But it's established by God due to what Christ has already accomplished. And it's ministered to every one of us by the Holy Spirit. We could say He who's exalted in heaven is the promised Messiah. the object, the securer, and the dispenser of all of God's promises and all of His facts. As a result, in due time, even the earth gets blessed. Meanwhile, those who believe in Him before He appears are associated with Him in heavenly relationships even while we're here. You know, when we studied Colossians and we got to chapter three, it said, since you'd be risen with Christ, are you?

Yes. What do you do? You set your mind on things above and not on things of the earth where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Why? Because I can. Because I'm positioned there. So we are on clear ground and fairer ground than Moses could occupy. He was, if this does not, this grace that we live under, which none could claim for themselves, it's just given to us because he suffered and took care of the sin issue and was received up into glory.

Grace should have an effect on, maybe put it another way, it should have a, It should win the believer's mind and his heart. That's what grace does. It should take us from being focused on the circumstances around us because the Lord Jesus loved us and gave himself for us. And he went to heaven and took us with him. And these spiritual blessings are already ours. It should draw us near. It should bind our hearts to him because of what he's done. And God spends all of his time in the Word trying to reveal that to us. I find it interesting that if I don't just settle down on what God tells me is true, then I spend all my time looking to do something that would make me more acceptable to him than I am already today. That's a lost system.

And he says to me, look, here's what I want you to do. I want you to behold me, I want you to see me, I want you to understand who I am by studying the word, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. That's what I want you to do. I want you to seek those things which are above, and the only way you can do that is by beholding me in the word.

What happens? I get transformed or changed by the Holy Spirit into the very image of Christ. You can't work that out yourself. That's a result of the grace that we live under. And he says, just behold me and trust me and I'll do the transforming. I'll do the conforming.

So as believers, we have a hope, which is an absolute certainty. Biblical hope is absolutely certain because of the source. It doesn't come from within me. My hope is based on an external source, which is from God. Every promise from God reflects a hope that came out from God. So we lay hold of the anchor, the one who has seen us, has taken us into heaven. Now, we talked last week a lot about annulling of a contract or invalidating of it. In other words, can it deprive me of its authority? Can it become ineffective by something that I do? It can't.

If you look real closely at Reformed theology or Arminianism, in their doctrine, there are things that they would say to you, well, if you don't hang on, or if you don't do this, or you don't do that, you somehow lose your position or status you have before God.

So you've got to keep humping down the trail. You've got to keep trying. And the thing is that we're so susceptible to that because we're so designed If I do this, then I get that. We're not programmed to be just the receivers of grace. So we get tricked. It's easy to be easily tricked by law. And so I have to persevere to the end. Or if my sin is so great, God is just gonna have to turn away from me. I had a friend call me one time and expound on this one sin that he committed and he was just distraught by it.

And I thought, well, I'm not gonna persuade him by, you know, quoting verses to him. So here's what I said to him. I said, you know, when Christ went to the cross, my Bible says he took all sins except yours. He said, what? I said, well, my Bible says that he took all sins and paid the price for all of them except this one. He said, no, he took that one. I said, goodbye. I'm done. Do you understand?

You can't send your way out of the grace that we live under. So, God will never change his mind about the promises. He never changes his mind about the grace because that's the way it is. The mentality of the legalist is this. If a man is holding out a reward for you and I, He puts a condition on it, and if I accept the condition, then it's fair.

But supposing, and I'll use myself, supposing I intend to leave my house and my car to Tom, right? And I'm not gonna add any conditions to it at all. I'm just gonna leave it to him. But then two or three years from now, I go to Tom and I say, well, Tom, let's talk about this. You got to pay me $40,000 for my house and my car Tom says wait a minute What do you mean? That's not the deal. Did you change your mind? What about the promise you made to me? You gave me the property Unconditionally and now you're calling upon me for payment So that's Paul's argument.

He's saying I If a covenant that's once enforced, which the Abrahamic covenant, cannot be changed or rendered void by any subsequent action any time later, God's covenant with Abraham couldn't be changed or rendered void by any subsequent Mosaic law system. It couldn't change the promises at all.

If this principle holds good in human contracts, which it does, much more is it true when God makes a contract. since God is most certainly more true to his promises than I would be. Ask Tom, he knows. So, expanded translation here is now, this now is what I mean. A covenant previously established by God, the law which came 430 years later does not render it void with the result that the promise becomes inoperative. Couldn't be. Verse 18. For if the inheritance is based on law, it's no longer based on a promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by promise. Notice the words law and promise in this verse are without the definite article in front of it, which means he's talking about just the character of two opposing principles, law and promise.

The word gave here is the word that we get our word chariots from, which is grace. And it denotes not merely a gift, but a gift which is given out of the stupendous generosity of the giver's heart with no strings tied to it at all. So the Greek word grace has exactly the same root meaning as this word has.

So let's just say that salvation was based on some obedience to a law system. That would mean that it would be based upon a mutual agreement between God and the sinner, whereby God would obligate himself to give salvation to any sinner who would earn it by obedience to the law. Now, the denomination I came out of, that's exactly what they preached. But the very genus of the word gave works against such teaching that salvation is by works.

It can't be by works. So Paul's argument in this verse is if the law reflects the promise at all, it renders it null and void. I'm sorry, if the law affects the promise at all, it renders it null and void. It can't be added. or edited without destroying it. If I want to edit my agreement with Tom, what happened? I just destroyed the whole contract. So salvation has got to rest on either a promise or upon the law. It's one of those two. It's not an admixture. It has to be one of those two.

The Judaizers claimed that it was rested upon the promise and the law. So Paul's argument is, shows that the law didn't repeal the promise and thus it would not have had any effect. Consequently, if the Judaizers are saying the inheritance is on the basis of law obedience, then it can't be on the basis of promise. So you can't have it both ways.

It's an already settled manner. So the word refers not only to the undertaking based upon the terms of a mutual agreement, both parties, but upon a free act of one who gives something expecting no pay for it. This is one shows the difference between law and grace. God gives us promises and gives us facts and he doesn't want us to pay him back. He just wants us to receive it. So there is a Greek word about the, I can't pronounce this too long, but it's an offer based upon the terms of a mutual agreement. That's not the word he uses here.

He uses the word charos. Gave, and this word gave is in the perfect tense, and we were talking about that in Sunday school this morning. It speaks of a completed act in the past having proven abiding results right now. The past act of God giving the inheritance on the basis of a promise, he presents results present to the writer Moses, present to the writer Paul. God gave the inheritance to Abraham by promise in 2000 BC. That's when he did it. The results of this act are still in existence today, In a century when Paul wrote, the law was given in 1500 BC, and the promise still held good after the law came, and it didn't set aside the promise at all. There was God's absolute promise to Abraham, it's gotta remain untouched forever.

If God were to make blessings depend on obedience, it would set this promise and law against each other and God would be divided. And that's not the way God operates. So, expanded translation, for if the inheritance is from law as a method of divine dealing, No longer is it from the promise as a method of divine dealing, but to Abraham through the intermediate instrumentality of promise, God has in grace freely bestowed it. It's free, he bestowed it.

The promise has its own special object, and law also is designed to have its own special and different object, and you can't mingle the two together. One doesn't set aside the other. On the contrary, no man has a right value for promise of God who couldn't despise the law.

And I want to make one last comment about the law. The law's important for us to understand. And one of the things that it does, it makes us appreciate the promise even that much more. I really look at the Jewish nation living under the Mosaic law, all 600 plus rules, and I cringe because if you break one law, you break them all. You can't pick and choose. It's like a tempered glass, a pane of glass. If you break it, it goes into a thousand pieces. How do you glue that back together? You can't.

So they were, of all people on the earth, in my mind, in the biggest problem with God, because he gave them all of these rules, and he told them, if you break my law, you will be cursed. And that's why he got it. But he didn't give the promises to Abraham on that. He gave them strictly as a promise. He promised him certain blessings. And we're relying upon totally the goodness and undeserved favor of God. And that's the way God promises things. That's the way he does things. That's the way he operates under grace.

So is it important that we learn grace? Absolutely it is. How else would you know? How else would we learn to become a receiver of God's incredible grace towards us? We live under grace. There's a great verse in Romans chapter six, verse 14. Sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? Because you're not under law, you're under grace. So if you wanna be free from sin, where do you have to be? Which umbrella you gotta be under? Most people would tell you, well, you gotta find out what the rules are in Obam, and then sin won't have dominion over you. That isn't what the Bible teaches. If I live under grace, sin won't have dominion over me. That's why we have it. God dealt with the sin issue with the Lord Jesus on the cross, and if I live under it, I'm free from the power of sin, because it's the power of the Spirit of God in me.

And the last line, it's just such a terrific line, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. God gave us our salvation by grace, and it's only by grace, it's not by law, and we began by grace, and we're to live in it by grace from now on. And that's what we've spent our time learning. We learn about the grace that God has given us. So let's pray. My dear Father, how thankful we are that that's how you did it. That you put us under a grace system. And it's difficult for us sometimes to grow in this grace, but that's what you intend. And the grace is associated with your Son, the Lord Jesus, so you have asked us to grow in the knowledge and grace of Him. And we pray in His precious name. Amen.