Faith Preceded Law

So as always, let's begin by looking at where we've come from and looking at last week's lesson. And I've reviewed that briefly. We weren't here to experience that with you, but that was covered by Miles last week. And I have three points to kind of relate to verses 13 through 16 entitled, Christ is born the curse of the law.

First is Christ's redemption allowed the blessing of Abraham to come upon his deathbed. door that's been opened here by fault of the way that it was, or maybe some other way. I think a second point is herein is the promise of the Spirit, which is also assessed by faith. So it's not only the fact that Christ's redemption extended the blessing of Abraham to the Gentile believer by faith, by the way, but the Holy Spirit was promised and accessed also by our faith.

And third, this promise was made to the seed, not seeds. and indicating our oneness in Christ. I think, you know, we're all one in Christ. We're all heirs to that inheritance, and we'll come back to that today. It's not this identification truth. The seed, we're all part of the seed, and the seed is being part of the body, and that body is the body of Christ. So I think that's another important message that's maybe worth consideration here. All right, so there is the review of the three bullet points I just reviewed, and now we'll turn to today's verses, Galatians 3, 17, 18.

Faith preceded law. So verse 17 says, in this I say that the law, which was 430 years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed, by the way, passive perfect, confirmed, passive with a perfect, ultimately, outcome, before by God that it should make the promise of no effect. So we're looking at a verse that indicates these are contradictory in terms of notation, the covenant versus the law and the promises that were made by Abraham years earlier. Okay, now get back here. I went to the ILG because I thought it was a little bit clearer here and the bold areas are ones that are written and interpreted a little bit differently than the New King James Version. And this I say is the same, the covenant.

Diotheci, we'll come back to that, that was confirmed before of God, the law, nomos, by the way, remember, I talked to six weeks ago or so, nomos is a law system, but I think has to be interpreted as the Mosaic law. I think we're dealing with the Judaizers here, and now nomos would be quite specifically the Mosaic law. 430 years after cannot disannul that it should make the promise of no effect. Okay, disannul, I think, is similar to should make of no effect.

But anyway, I think that the inner letter is a little bit better. So let's define Coven. And by the way, the nice thing about Sprongs is he gives you the D-A-A-K. D-A-A-K. properly as a description. So Strong defines this as a contract, especially a divisory will can be translated as a covenant or a testament. So that's Strong's definition of this term.

And I think let's begin to list the biblical covenants. And then five are between God and man, and the others are between God and ultimately a broader audience. So let's look at them. It's always worthwhile to go back and look at these things. So I didn't give you scripture for all these, but we could easily turn to them if we had to.

The Adamic Covenant looks at the conditions of life in the garden and the ultimate results of sin. The Noahic Covenant relates to the promise to never destroy the earth again by flood, and ultimately government would follow after the Noahic, or indicated by the Noahic Covenant. The Abrahamic Covenants, what we're looking at today, is to descendants, which relates to the land and blessing that goes far beyond. By the way, the Jewish community was really not truly founded based on the Mosaic Law, obviously at the time of Abraham. So these promises extend beyond the Jewish community. The Mosaic Covenant was conditional, a set of rules directed to Israelites at the time of Mount Sinai, includes the Ten Commandments and many more other things that are part of the extended law.

The Nevitic Covenant, I'm summarizing these, is an eternal kingship for David and his lineage with Christ as the king. The New Covenant is a salvation and personal relationship with God via Christ and the work he's done at the cross and through the resurrection. And the Everlasting Covenant is an eternal life and restoration of all of us as believers. So those are the covenants, and we're not here to study the covenants today, but these are ultimately relationships between God and man. And this is not man's covenant. which can be broken. These are gods which are not able to be changed.

Interesting Hebrews 9 15 we've got several covenants that are referred to here and for this reason he is the mediator of the new covenant by means of death, so that's, if you will, the new covenant is stated as one of the seven there. For the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, which I think is the Adamic covenant, the first covenant, we're all born into sin, are we not? That those who are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance, which is really the everlasting covenant. I think maybe I'm over-reinterpreting verse 15 and verse 9, but I think three covenants are really dealt with. Now, in which country is this that we're relating to here? It's clearly Abrahamica.

Okay, what's the significance of the 430 years? Well, let's look at this. In Exodus chapter 12, verses 40 and 41, it says, now the sojourn of the children of Israel who lived in Egypt, by the way, and Canaan in earlier translations, was 430 years. And it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, on that very same day, it came to pass that all of the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. Now here's the way this was interpreted by Constable, and hopefully we're going to get that to come out. There we go, all right. So if we look at this, here's the 430 year covenant as it's, or time in Egypt as it relates to scripture and the Exodus.

Jacob ultimately moves to Egypt, and over 430 years, the exodus of the, you know, indwelling in Egypt occurs, and this is representing 430 years. Another way to interpret it is the Israelites are enslaved, and ultimately to the point where they enter the promised land, it could also be interpreted 430 years. But let me give you a different kind of take on this. There's consummal Experts on the topic will say things like this. But if you do the math, you'll find that this is not methodically possible.

You see, Moses was 80 years old when they left Egypt. His father Amram lived to 137. His father Kohath lived to 133. And Kohath was one of the 66 persons who went with Jacob down into Egypt. Now let's just stretch this out as much as we possibly can. Let's assume that Kohath was a newborn baby when he arrived in Egypt.

Let's assume that Amran was born the year that his father died, and let's assume that Moses was born the year that his father died. So take 133 plus 137 plus 80, and that equals 350, which means that the amount of time the Israelites were in Egypt could have been no longer than 350 years maximum. Now more than likely Kohath was probably not a newborn baby when he arrived in Egypt, more than likely Moses was not born the year that his father died, and more than likely Amran was not born the year that his father died. which means that the amount of time the Israelites were in Egypt would have been significantly less than 350 years. So why does Exodus 1240 say the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years when this is not mathematically possible?

The key is found in one of Paul's letters. In Galatians 3, 16 and 17, Paul says, Now to Abraham and his seed whom the promise is made. And this I say, that the law, which was 430 years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ. Basically, Paul is saying that from the time that Abraham received the promise to the time that Moses received the law, there was 430 years.

Well, Abraham received the promise when he entered Canaan when he was 75 years old. Then 25 years later, when Abraham was 100 years old, that's when Isaac was born. Then 60 years later, when Isaac was 60 years old, that's when Jacob was born. Then 130 years later, when Jacob was 130 years old, that's when all of Israel arrived in Egypt. So take 25 plus 60 plus 130, and that equals 215, which means that there was 215 years from the time that Abraham entered Canaan to the time that all of Israel arrived in Egypt.

Now, Moses received the law the same time that they left Egypt, because remember, the Israelites were living in Goshen, and then Moses led them out of Goshen, brought them through the wilderness, and brought them to the sea. And then God split the waters of the sea in half and brought them into Midian, which is in Arabia, and brought them to Mount Sinai, which is where Moses received the law. And so Moses received the law at the same time they left Egypt.

So Paul is saying that there was 430 years from this point to this point. And according to the Old Testament, there's 215 years from this point to this point. So take 430 years and then subtract 215 years and that equals 215, which means that the amount of time that the Israelites were in Egypt was 215 years. 215 in Canaan, 430 total. Now that is mathematically possible. which is 215, is significantly less than 350.

And that's exactly what the Greek Septuagint says in Exodus 12, 40. It says, and the sojourning of the children of Israel while they sojourned in the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan was 430 years. The Samaritan Pentateuch says the same thing. It says, now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was 430 years.

Flavius Josephus said they left Egypt 430 years after our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but 215 years only after Jacob removed him to Egypt. Flavius Josephus is saying the exact same thing. He's saying they left Egypt 430 years since our forefather Abraham came into Canaan, but 215 years only since Jacob removed him to Egypt. Flavius Josephus is saying the exact same thing. So why do modern translations say that the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years when this is not mathematically possible.

The reason why is because modern translations like the New King James, the NIV, the NASV, these are all translated from the Hebrew Masoretic text. But the Hebrew Masoretic text is not the original Hebrew text. The copy of the Masoretic text that most modern translations are translated from is called the Leningrad Codex, which was copied in the 11th century AD. But the Greek Septuagint was translated more than a thousand years before that in 250 BC, which means that the Greek Septuagint would not have been translated from the Hebrew Masoretic, but rather it would have been translated from a much older copy of the Hebrew that's no longer around today. The Samaritan Pentateuch also predates the Masoretic text and would also have been translated from a much older copy of the Hebrew. Clavius Josephus was a first century Jewish historian. He lived long before the Masoretic text was copied, and Josephus had access to ancient Hebrew texts that have since been lost or destroyed.

Paul the Apostle lived long before the Nazaretic text was copied, and Paul was a Hebrew. In Acts 26, when Paul talks about his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he says that Jesus spoke to him in the Hebrew language. And Paul understood it. Paul knew Hebrew. And so Paul would also have studied for a much older copy of the Hebrew. And what Paul says in Galatians 3, 16 and 17 is consistent with the Greeks' contingent on Samaritan penitentiary and their writing to find his Josephus.

And the Bible says, by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word shall be established. Well, we've got more than two or three witnesses here. We've got four witnesses all bearing witness that the original Hebrew text said that the Israelites will be in Egypt and Canaan for 430 years.

But more than 1,000 years later, when the Hebrew Masoretic text was copied, the phrase and Canaan was dropped out of the text. And all of our Bibles are translated from this corrupt copy of the Hebrew. The new King James, the old King James, the NIV, If you go to BibleGateway.com, you'll find there's 50 English translations of the Bible on this website. And every single one of them say that the Israelites were...

All right, so is that helpful? I found it very, very helpful. Not to debate the Bible, it's just that the additional information related to the early translations obviously left out something very important there and allows us to interpret the 430 years much more accurately. I think it was good that this individual brought this into the era of Paul, which makes multiple witnesses of the early translation that says Canaan should have been included. in addition to Egypt. So hopefully that was helpful to you. It was helpful to me. Because when I looked at multiple versions of the Bible, there was one translation that had Canaan in it. That bothered me. And so I kind of went online to see if I could explain that to myself. And I think that was a very accurate explanation.

Bob, any thoughts about that? I think that's great. It emphasizes, when we talk about the inerrancy of the Bible, It has to be the original manuscripts, which we do not have. Although we could get to them, we don't have them. So what do you think then we can conclude from this verse? Well, let me think out loud with you.

I think because God's covenants are irrevocable, we must agree biblically on that. Unlike man's covenants, when God makes the covenant, his promise can't be broken. We're going to look at how his promise relates to the Mosaic law in terms of not disannulling the law, but in terms of the body of Christ that we call the church, ultimately this makes us interpret this correctly. And what was man's responsibility to the Abrahamic covenant versus the Mosaic law? Your thoughts. What's our responsibility today to the Abrahamic covenant versus the Mosaic covenant? It's not that the book of Galatians? One was belief and the other is works. Right. Yeah. Right. Right.

Then why did Paul have to spell this out for the Judaizers in Galatia? Why do you think this was so necessary? And we'll come to this. What did the Judaizers believe? Did they believe that Christ wasn't crucified and resurrected? I think many did, but they were saying that salvation was more than that. Salvation is, yes, we believe. In fact, the early book of Acts, Bob, that we're studying in our home studies really related to the fact that the early Jews, many of them believed in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Many had seen him, but yet they still felt that we needed to bring on salvations not only by belief in the cross and what it accomplished, but by works, by works also, right?

All right. And Paul is bringing out the fact that faith went some 430 years long before the law ever existed. And that's really the basis of the Abrahamic covenant. In fact, God's rule has always been what God has revealed, we will respond to by faith. And Adam and Eve in the garden did not respond to it by faith. And everything that's occurred subsequently is man's inability to respond to God's law or now platform of grace and truth by faith. John 117 for the law, again, any law system, but I think ultimately applying here to the Mosaic law, was given through Moses. But grace and truth came from Jesus Christ.

That takes you all the way back to Genesis 3.15.

Yep, the original prophecy of the cross, right. F.B. Meyer, like what he said, the Mosaic dispensation was a parenthesis. in God's dealings with man, it was intended to produce conviction of sin. Isn't that an interesting kind of metaphor? It's a parenthesis in God's dealings with man, the Mosaic Law. Oh, by the way, we got this legal system, but ultimately, as we'll see a little later, Galatians 3, 24 deals with it as being our tutor, our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. In the same way, isn't The church, a parenthesis, between God's promise to Abraham, the Jewish people, and eternity, the church is just a parenthesis.

Right. In a sense. Is that a comment or a question? Well, isn't that just kind of similar? I think it's a good statement. All right, let's go to the second verse. For if the inheritance is of the law, it's no longer of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. And now we're going to try to separate these in a little bit more here.

What's an inheritance? Well, what do you think of it simplistically? When dad dies, how much is left over? One of our son-in-laws wonders, what's going to happen to our house when you die? He's already asking that question. Is he first in line for the house? Well, they see it. I say, why don't you ask your siblings about this? Never mind. The dogs and the cats. I'm going to ask a question in a little bit more detail here.

Is an inheritance simply an earthly inheritance? Or biblically, can we think of it as an eternal blessedness in the consummated kingdom of God, which is to be expected after the visible return of Christ and or meaning kingdom made stuff. Or is it the share which an individual will have in that eternal blessedness, or more? My thoughts are more, and I'll save those for a second. So this is what Strong has to say, I think, in his definition of inheritance. It could be an earthly inheritance, it could relate to kingdom-age stuff, or it could relate to the internal blessedness or inheritance we get to being with him in eternity forevermore. What are your thoughts?

What is the inheritance that's spoken to by Paul to us, to the Galatian Church? A thought that I have is most of us think today of an inheritance as something we get after our parents die. We get something later. But a biblical inheritance, a New Testament inheritance, is something we have right now.

And that's pretty important. Yeah. So here are my thoughts. It's not only about the fact that the Kingdom Age, there's promises there, which the Judahites may have appreciated more than maybe even we do today. But our eternal presence with the Lord Jesus Christ is an inheritance that we're promised and will be ultimately accomplished. How about now? I like what Bob said.

How about our position, our identification, and how that affects our day in and day out walk? I mean, that's an inheritance we all have right now. We're heavenly citizens, all of us. And that inheritance is something that most of us in current Christianity don't recognize, is an inheritance of a new life created in Christ Jesus. Now, that wasn't part of Strong's definition. I'm not smarter than he is. I'm just thinking, if I'm thinking of the inheritance, this is not where I'm going to be eternally and not ruling with him in the kingdom age. But I'm thinking about today. My inheritance is a new life in Christ Jesus. And I think that's something that we can, I think, interpret the rest of Paul's writings to say that this is also an important part of this inheritance.

But God, notice the term, charizomai. He gave it to Abraham as a promise or by promise. Now, it's important that the verb gave here in the perfect tense. So he gave it for an extended history of the rest of existence, if you will. So gave it once for ongoing, ultimately promised to be delivered. I think we used to have a nice series of statements, and I didn't lift all of it here, but I lifted parts of it, and I should have made a dot, dot, dot where I left some things out, but I didn't.

So he says, this is a specialized word. It denotes not merely a gift. but a gift which is given out of the spontaneous generosity of the giver's heart, with no strings tied to it. If salvation were by obedience to the law, that would mean that it would be based upon a neutral 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. There is a Greek word, hypothesis or cases, which is used of an offer based upon the terms of mutual agreement, but it's not used here.

So this is a promise of God that is entirely one that is irrevocable and applicable from the time he gave it to Abraham to today and beyond. So, all right. On what was God's promise to Abraham contingent? God's integrity. All right. What else? Abraham's faith. Okay, very important. I think that's kind of the foundation of really what the covenant was based on. The promised Abraham came before the Mosaic Law. It's an important thing to recall. We looked at that a little bit through the video today.

And salvation must either relate to the promise or the law. So what was the purpose of the Mosaic Law or any law system? Why was the law system then given if the promise was so valid and important in terms of extending God's grace to everyone? To reveal sin. I'm sorry? To reveal sin. Very, very important, isn't it?

So the Judaizers may not have ignored the importance of Christ, and what he could accomplish. But they wanted to say that salvation, I've said this before, was not only the grace principle, but living a life that was proven to be holy and impacted by law. And if you will, That atmosphere, I think, is substantially still present today. Although, do you think most people who bring these legal systems into their operation, whether it be the Mosaic law or any law we apply to ourselves, really, do they ignore scripture or are they just inadequately informed by the fact that their hungry heart has never been established or developed?

What are your thoughts about that? inadequately informed. Is it all education though? I mean, I remember Miles said that it's harder to bring a believer to understanding the identification truths and the new creations we are in life than to bring someone who's unsaved to the Lord. I don't know whether we have any data to support that, but I don't know how many times you've been with other believers and when you're talking, it's almost like you're talking a different language. We're not trying to be judgmental. We want them to share the joy and encouragement they have by application of scriptural truth that we're new creations, we have new lives to live.

So is education, Carolyn, do you think that's the answer? We just need to get more people informed about this? I don't know about that, but I think a lot of them just are in this kind of mode that they're getting this particular education and they never go outside of that. I think also it means that people want to be involved in this. They want to have something to do.

That's really what I think it is. They don't know how to step back and understand that the Lord has already done all this. Just believe it. It's too simple. I'd like to opine here. I think there are two basic principles that most of the Christian world falls short of understanding, and that may be education to some extent. But I've always believed, I'm personalizing this, I had to come to the end of myself before I realized these two truths.

The first is, again, I've said this so many times, 2 Corinthians 5.21, he hath made him who knew no sin to be made sin for me and everyone else, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. So the point number one is if you don't see yourself as being made righteous, then what other conclusion can you come to? And how many people in neo-evangelical or covenant churches see themselves as God sees them as righteous? I think that's incredibly important point number one. And I think the second very important point is the sin nature never changes.

And I think a lot of people working for God and trying to please him in their lives and doing all these wonderful things, are trying to get old Adam buffed up here so that he doesn't seem to exist any longer. And if we try to educate people on these truths, we can only let God's word and the Holy Spirit bring these truths out. But I don't know about you all, but I think I'm speaking for all of us. The joy and the lack of burden to living the Christian life is not dependent on my doing. It's dependent on my believing, right, in terms of these important truths.

So that could be a play on words when you use salivation instead of salvation. They could salivate. That's something that they do. So that could go both ways. I know it was intentional, but it was salivation. Bob, you had an unintended pun there, right? Good, Bob. You know, the word check didn't pick it up. Sounds like something. I saw 2 Shakespeare's. Say that you did earlier and I won't forget it. I'll hold that against you. Right?

Yeah, it's okay. Well, don't feel bad, Bob. I was like, my angels and angles, and Bonnie's all upset. Well, actually, you didn't mean angles, you meant angels. But okay. But pass the spell checker. What's the problem? It's not a spell checker. If you'd asked for grammar, that wouldn't have been corrected, right? These grammar problems. Yeah, Jeff.

So, I see what you're saying is, It's harder to re-educate somebody than it is to educate. You know, with a blank slate, when people just come to Salvation, and you're educating them about their position and their condition and all that stuff, they take it. But when you try and re-educate somebody who thinks they already know, it's really difficult.

So, I think that's what you're saying. Well, I think in the flesh, the natural tendency when you get saved is, I've got a lot of work to do for God. Look what He's done for me. I mean, I think you see that very importantly. And that's most of our responses, isn't it? But I think it's the idea of a new believer that really educating them up front in good doctrine is important for them to have a joyful and God-fearing and God-glorifying life to follow. And we're not there to be the judge of that. Only he could be the judge of our lives, how we live it. All right.

Romans 4.14 says, for if those who are of the law are heirs, then faith is made void and the promise is made of no effect. Boy, those are strong words, and we heard from the pulpit here in the last year or two in the Book of Romans.

So if those who are under law believe that that's an important component of their salivation experience, then ultimately, it's just like Galatians 2.21.

We always read Galatians 2.20, but I'm paraphrasing 2.21, but basically Christ died in vain if, in fact, we are believing we're saved by law. All right, Galatians 3, 24, and 25, verses we'll come to in the next few weeks, presumably. I love these verses.

Therefore, the law was our tutor, or the King James Early says, schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. In other words, the whole purpose of the legal system was to make us recognize we're falling, fall short. And our only response then is to be justified by faith, just like Abraham had promised. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster or a tutor. Strong words, for sure. So let's end with what other promises has God made? Well, I turned to a very frequent kind of avenue to go down.

I went to AI. Oh, that's terrible. Is that sinful? Well, anyway, according to AI, notice the lack of definition here. I thought AI was so smart. There isn't one definitive number, but biblical researchers and scholars estimate thousands of God's promises in the Bible with figures ranging from over 3,000 to as many as 30,000 as sum counts. What do you think of that? What a wise creature. You can't narrow it between 3,000 and 30,000?

We could have said that. I know. We didn't need AI for that. That's a log difference. You engineers in the room, right? So anyway, I'm going to just, you can do this personally. You can vocalize it. Let's just name one. I mean, if there's 3,000 of them. So what I thought I'd do is I just put this in here to give you an idea that here's someone, if you go online, people are listing promises anywhere from a few to multiple ones. And I just thought this would be one. Here's 48 promises. They're not intended for you to read. These are 48 of 3,000 to 30,000 promises. So I think the promises, that we see in the covenants are ultimately ones in which we can look at and really look into the facts. But, I mean, the simplest promise is John 3, 16, right? I mean, you know, so.

And he'll never leave us or forsake us and go on and on and on. I mean, almost every verse you can turn into a promise, just about. Well, I think one thing to think about the promise is to think about the three verb tenses of being saved. I was saved. Once you're saved, you're given eternal life. So that's one promise. We're being saved day in and day out by faith. And ultimately, that salvation relates to the manifestation of the new creations we are in Christ. And that promise is we have a new life to live by faith, just like I got saved by faith. So that's something we touched base with here briefly before. And the other thing that absence from the body present with the Lord is a promise that we all are counting on.

We're talking Martin, I've talked about a neighbor. This neighbor is a Buddhist. A very nice man, he does a lot for us and we're glad he's our neighbor now. But he's a Buddhist and he's lost his father recently and he's in a period of mourning which can last anywhere from 30 days to a year and a half or something like that.

And now we were, Margaret found out just I guess when I was gone that his mother now has metastatic breast cancer and is not looking, which is not looking very favorable. And he's really a downer. I mean, what does someone without faith and eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ think about or deal with? By the way, there are lots of people who lose friends and relatives who deal with this pretty well from a perspective that we have of them. But down deep, we have a whole different ability to deal with this.

Having lost a wife at age 45 with five children was a trial and tribulation, but this light affliction, which works for but a moment, worketh in us a more far eternal and exceeding way to glory while we look not at the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.

Let's close in prayer. Father, we're grateful for the fact that Abraham's promise continues to be sustained in each of our lives today and for the many who have not yet accepted their salvation experience by your great love and truth and grace. We're thankful for these. aspects of scripture which really define the importance of our continued belief that it's ultimately your grace and truth that brings us by faith to you and that ultimately we've been saved, we're being saved, and will be saved, and the law no longer is applicable to us. We recognize it is holy, but it was there to educate us in terms of the need for salvation through the work and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.