Part 3, Why the Law

Galatians chapter 3 19 through 24 part 3 why the law is what we're on today, and it's kind of good that I Kind of like that Bob did cover everything through 24 last week Because that will give us a chance to go over it again and do a big kind of broad review this morning in part 3 and And then we can move on next week into verse 25. And you guys can still hear me okay? Yes. Sound great. Okay. And you guys sound good too. Okay.

So chapter 3 of verse 19, why the law then it was added because of transgressions having been ordained. And that ordained word is to be appointed or prescribed or set in order through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come. to whom the promise had been made. I looked at that two weeks ago in detail, and verse 20 goes on to say, now a mediator is for only one party, whereas God is only one.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God, Paul says, may it never be. For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on the law. But the scripture has shut everyone up under sin so that the promise by faith in Christ Jesus might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by faith.

So that's our text for today, for the last third part of this series. I wanted to review this, so this is review. Why the law? That's added because of transgressions. It made sin manifest, brought it out into the open. Number three, it made sin known. It concluded all members of the Adamic race were under sin. The law stops every mouth, and the law establishes accountability before God, and then it puts it put in Israel under the custody of a tutor, or a schoolmaster, or a teacher, you could say, until Christ came.

That word is a pedigree, right? And there's one other In reality, I read a lot of Schaeffer, this Lewis Barry Schaeffer this last week, and he had this, and I'm going to deal with the law a lot this morning, and Schaeffer's view on it. And he had one other reason, which was interesting, not a reason, but he made an observation. And I had the same observation, and that is, Reason number eight is they asked for it. They didn't have to enter into it. And I was thinking, well, what if they said, no, we don't want it? I think they could have done that.

Because when you go to Exodus chapter 19, the Lord on the mountain called to them from the mountain, and he said to Israel, he said, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. And now then, if you obey my voice and keep my commandment, then you shall be my own possession among the peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be before me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. So Moses, the people together, Moses came back with what they say, Israel, and they say, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And if you look at what's in verse four of chapter 19 of Exodus there, you can see how God is reminding them what he's done. And they saw this physically. He brought them up out of Egypt, and they saw with their own eyes what he did to the Egyptians, and he wore them on eagles' wings.

And that was in grace. That's before the law ever came about. So then, Chafer says, the marvelous blessedness of that grace relationship the grace relationship of bearing them up on eagles' wings there, should have appealed to Israel as the priceless riches of the unfailing mercy of God, which it was. When the law was proposed, they deliberately forsook their position under grace, which had been their relationship to Him until that day and placed themselves under the law.

They surrendered their blessings of grace. So, Chafer made this point, what they could have said, they could have said to God, none of these things we can do. We crave only to remain in your boundless mercy and love. You sought us and you saved us from all our enemies. And if we could just keep in this position without this law, because we won't be able to keep it, that would have reached the heart of God, is what Schaeffer says. And he would have said, okay, that's a good request.

Because if you think about Israel asked for a king, and they got a king. And then they asked that, not for God to speak directly to them from the mountain, from Mount Sinai. They said, can you speak to Moses and then have Moses tell us what you told Moses, right? So, and God honored those two requests, a king and then to not speak directly to them.

So, He could have went about it another way with this, but he made this proposal for the law and they took it. So does that make sense to everyone? And it's just an observation, but I think it's a good one. Can you still hear me out there? Yeah, it's a good observation and it's kind of interesting because it's sort of the gratitude motive, you might say. And that's often what's taught for the church that, well, we've got to obey God because we're grateful for his great salvation. And as much as we may be grateful, it's not enough.

You know, it doesn't enable us to live a righteous life, right? Yeah. Yeah. It has nothing to do with righteousness. Well, the law can't bring about righteousness. And that's all through Christ Jesus himself. Yeah, it's just an interest. And so the law was at, and you can see that way that the law was added. And they were getting along pretty well without it. And think about all the saints before the law. They got along without the law.

So in way of review of verse 20 here, I put up this slide, and Roger, thanks for that, because it really outlines it really well. So in verse 20, it says, now a mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. So the things of Galatians 3.20 is, and My dad had these points. First, the parties. You can see that under the law, the two parties are in view on the left-hand side. God and Israel are the two parties, whereas in the promise to Abraham on the right side, there's only one party, God, and that's what verse 20 is conveying.

Number two, under the law, the mediator is Moses, under the promise of Abraham, there is no meteor, not required. Under the law, the covenant is the law. And then under the promise to Abraham, it's grace. And I don't really like to call the covenant a promise covenant or a grace covenant. So it's just a promise, right? It's just grace. So you can kind of remove that word covenant from 0.3 over on the right hand side under the promise to Abraham.

The type of covenant of the law to Israel is conditional and temporal. That's important, temporal. And then under the promise to Abraham, it's an unconditional and eternal promise. 0.5, the obligation of the parties under the law is to Israel. They have to keep the covenant, and then if they keep it, they get blessed. If they don't keep it, they're cursed. Whereas under the promise to Abraham, it's just one party, God, who fulfills his promise to them, and he brings righteousness and life via the seed that is spoken of, the seed of Abraham.

Man's response under the law on the left-hand side there, point six, is it's a works covenant. Whereas on the right side, under the promise to Abraham, it's faith. His response must be faith. Point seven, under the law on the left-hand side, the purpose is to reveal man's sin, and we looked at that a lot, and to reveal God's righteousness.

Whereas under the promise to Abraham, the purpose is to reveal God's grace, because the promise to Abraham is all grace. And then finally, the inheritance under the law is death. And the inheritance of the promise to Abraham is righteousness and life. So I like that. I like that chart. And it's just good to review. It helps really well in reviewing verse 20 there.

Oh, and I have this side, the law is inferior. And we looked at this two weeks ago and subordinate to the, um, the superior or the superiority of, of the promise to Abraham. So it's subordinate to an inferior to that. Um, so here's where we get into Kafer and his, um, The word law, or nomos, it's any rule or conduct regulating conduct and requiring the adequate authority and power vested in a lawgiver for its enforcement.

But it has a lot wider use in the Bible, and Schaeffer will tell us how, and there's like seven points here. First, the law can be the Ten Commandments, and we all know that. And we're dealing with that a lot in the text of this scripture in Galatians.

So the 10 commands were written on tablets of stone, and they are the crystallization of the entire law of Moses. They're summarized by Christ as saying, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. And second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That's it summarized.

Number two, the law can mean the whole system of government of Israel in the land. And that is the Ten Commandments, plus there are the judgments and the ordinances. And the judgments are relative to the social life of Israel. And you can see the scripture reference there, Exodus 21.1 through Exodus 24.11. And it has to do with how they treat their slaves, and personal injury, and property rights, and various and sundry laws that God gives them. And then the ordinances, this whole package, so it's a three-pronged package with the Ten Commandments, the judgments, and the ordinances.

The ordinances are laid out in Exodus 24.12 through 31.8. And those, a lot of how they're to conduct the temple service and the materials in the temple and things like that. So the judgments are like things like if I live next door to Vonnie and Roger and my ox goes into their fence and then eat their crops, well, I have to repay them the crops. Or if my ox unfortunately gores their cat or something, I have to put the ox to death, right?

And it all makes sense. So that's the law. That's the system of government to Israel. Number three, the kingdom rule, the law of the Messiah. So the millennial kingdom law is another usage of the word law. And that's the future millennial reign of Christ. And it's the fulfillment of all the covenants with Israel.

And here they're laid out as such, like blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs of the kingdom of heaven, that constitutes the law rule of the kingdom. So if you're, if you Convey this in your spirit. If you are poor in spirit, you will be blessed. There's no really cursing there, but this is how people are to live their life in the millennial kingdom.

So another use of the word law in scripture is the whole revealed will of God for any individual nation when contemplated as a covenant of works, which is to be wrought in the energy of the flesh. And that's a lot to say. So what he's saying is, the essential principle of law is embodied in the covenant of works. Divine blessing is conditioned on the performance of the entire law of God. So sometimes in scripture, you see when it says law, it kind of has that concept in mind. It's when any work is undertaken for God by which it is hoped to gain divine favor, that work is wrought out rot of the necessity of the basis of pure law.

And contrast that with grace. So when a work is undertaken for God in grace, it is because it is recognized that divine favor and blessing have already been given, have already been received. And that's, so you do the work in harmony with pure grace, if you do it in thanksgiving for what God has already provided you. So in grace, daily life is governed by the explicit injunctions and beseechings. They're heavenly in character, and they're brought about by the enabling power of the indwelling Holy Spirit for their fulfillment. It's how grace works. Number five, any rule prescribed by men When you see the law in the Bible, it could mean that. So the word nomos is extended to mean that regulations men may make among themselves.

Like in 1 Timothy 1.8 is a good example, but we know that the law is good if a man uses it lawfully.

The key concept here is when the law of Moses or the kingdom laws assumed as a rule of life, by any Jew, any Gentile, or any Christian, it becomes a self-imposed man-made law unto themselves, Romans 2.14.

So yeah, so what that's saying is like the Seventh-day Adventists, they're brothers in Christ, but they stick to the Sabbath, right? They say that didn't go away. So they took that little piece of the mosaic law, just that little piece, and probably the Ten Commandments, and they lived that way. Well, they constructed that themselves, didn't they?

That's a rule unto themselves, man-made and self-imposed, is how point five kind of comes out. Or I was thinking about The rules of mankind in today's world, like with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there's all this, you know, he was, the media isn't saying that's a bad thing because they say Charlie Kirk was, oh, he said hateful things and blah, blah, blah. And that's a rule unto themselves. And the people on that side seem to know that. that unwritten rule and they make it a rule.

But that's a man-made rule or a man-made law that has nothing to do with God. So point six, any recognized principle in operation, this is very general, but you can substitute the word law for power. Like the law of gravity is actually the power of gravity.

Or Romans 8, 2. So if I am to read Romans 8, 2, for the power of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the power of sin and death. Romans 8, 2. But of course that verse reads for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. I like that kind of substitution that makes it clear sometimes when the word law appears.

And finally, the law can be used as a necessary sequence between a cause and its effect, like when Paul says in Romans 7.21... I find then that a law that when I would do good, evil is present in me. So it's a cause and effect way to use that word nomos in the Bible.

So there we go. There's the seven points from Schaeffer. And it kind of makes it kind of clear. Another, we go on to this chart. I like this chart, this old fashioned chart from my dad, because it really sets forth The fact that the law, see how it's, I like it, it's a block, and it's separate from the Abrahamic promise above in blue.

So it's a piece. And it lasts from Moses to the church. And what could you do? You can remove that piece. It's kind of movable. But it was there. It happened. And those were the dates. It started at Moses, ended in the church. And I like how it's blocked out like that. law block would be the messianic law, the law of the kingdom and the thousand year millennial reign of Christ. So that's a block and that occurs in the yet future, but you can see how.

I like how this shows that the Abrahamic covenant or the promise is eternal and it's fulfilled at the second coming of Christ there. to Israel, but we get a little piece of it down at the bottom, and you see there, all nations through the seed. That's our little piece that we get, and that's how we came to be believers in that little piece. That's our little cutout, I guess, from the Abrahamic promise. I like that chart because it shows the timeline, it shows the the separation of the elements of the law versus the Abrahamic promise.

I also like this one. Thanks, Roger, for sending it. You guys discussed this last week, and there's the jail. Well, that's what I remember. Andrew, I remember this one, so I went looking for it. Oh, good, yeah. Well, thanks, because it's just really...

So this verse 22, but the scripture has shut up everyone under sin. so that the promise by faith in Christ Jesus might be given to those who believe. So there it is, the scripture shuts up everyone under sin and all mankind. And you could say it both ways here, all mankind and Israel too, if you're dealing with just the nation of Israel and the reason why God gave the law to Israel. So, this word came up last week, confinement, and Bob Ethel liked that word confinement. Everyone's confined under sin in this verse.

And this side of it, the left side, when we're in jail, when we're in confinement under the law, that's the weak and beggarly elements in Galatians 4.9, the law is.

And so then faith comes, the Lord Jesus and the cross on the right side, and the promises on the right side. And that's the Abrahamic promise. And so these, from Romans 11, these wild branches are grafted in to the Abrahamic promise of grace. So that's our side, and you can see that the law is a guard.

My dad has this old-fashioned word, policeman, but I think it's a prison guard. And he keeps everyone, he guards the unrighteous under sin, and that's what the scripture tells us. And it kind of looks like he's carrying a broom, but that's a long ride. Or maybe a bass oboe or something. Andrew, I have a question. What are the minus R's under all the persons who are confined?

Minus righteousness. Negative righteousness. Or unrighteousness. Unrighteousness, there we go. So those individuals are unrighteous. Yeah, and I think Ron Merriman kind of, that's kind of from him. He's minus R and plus R. Plus R is righteousness. And you can see that on the other side. On the right-hand side, plus righteous slash life. Let me go to this next chart. And you can see that it's before and after. Before faith came or before the cross and after. See that line in the middle.

So I like that and that's what the the verses verse 23 moving on to verse 23 But before faith came we were kept under custody until the law under the law Being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed. So this slide I I kind of took a lot of inspiration from the last slide and I kind of created my own here It's a little more modern But here we have, it's actually that we're a child and we're taken to and from school, from our house, by a schoolmaster who's vigilant, who's strictly rigorous and custodial. And we're under the moral care of this schoolmaster. So that's us before faith came and we're shut up to that and kept by that schoolmaster with a view to or until, and Bob Echol brought that out last week, until the faith came.

And the faith is, it has the definite article, the faith, and it's that body of truth, the things that, Concern Christ and the cross and salvation. That's the faith So we're shut up until that arrived and this child Starts out as a minor down at the bottom you see and eventually reaches the age of majority so you can see This chart is kind of has a double prong, one for Israel. Israel kept under the schoolmaster and they were children in the age of minority. And the Israelites would have recognized this because they knew what this schoolmaster was, this pedagogue.

And then when they become sons, fully grown sons, they inherit their father's estate. Right. So, uh, I kind of got an estate here and there's all the estate with its, uh, stock portfolios. What I mean to say with the charts and the, uh, yeah, some, so that's the estate. Yeah. Bitcoin and things like that. So that's how I kind of recognize this or describing this estate that this Israel, this son in Israel, they knew what this meant.

But it also has this other meaning that for us, we're children when we don't know Christ. And then before, we're under the schoolmaster, but then we become adult sons in Christ. And so that the state, and with what I have as a the diamonds and the money, you can think of that as the richest in Christ, the unfathomable riches in Christ Jesus from Ephesians, right? The son gets married and has a family. So, but on that side, when we become fully mature, we're justified by faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus. We're now a son who has come into his father's estate.

This son enters into the rich enjoyment of the inheritance, 1 Peter 1.4.

And from Galatians 3.29, it says of us belonging to Christ, Abraham's descendant, heirs according to the promise.

So that was my attempt to kind of make visual of verse 23 there, so I think it's I don't know if it's good as What my dad did done on the other the jailer verse No, good job. You like it. There it is. Yeah So And not on the law side. It's the elemental things of the world from Galatians 4 3 you can see on the left there Oh, but I want to say because Paul goes on to speak about this schoolmaster and how in the later verses from today. So we'll look at that. But you can see that that schoolmaster looks like a teacher, but that word isn't really a teacher.

It's more, and I think Bob W. raised this point last week. He's more of a nanny, right? And he takes the child from school or from home to school back again, gets him to soccer practice. And when he misbehaves, we'll wrap him on the knuckle with a ruler, that sort of thing. So not so much of a teacher as a nanny.

And I was thinking, a good example is when I was a kid, I used to watch a show called Family Affair. if you remember. And on Family Affair, you had two little kids, and they didn't have a mother. And they had a father who was working in Manhattan. And so he had a nanny, but the nanny was Mr. French. And he was a big rotund guy, and he dressed impeccably. And he had a beard. And it was Mr. French was the schoolmaster. And he took care of Buffy and Jodi. And, uh, he would discipline them and he'd get them to school and back and all that stuff. Whereas the, the father could concentrate on, cause he was a big architect or something. So he didn't have any time watch his kids, but there you go. Okay. So that is kind of the review. And then what I have, um, it. I was going to just add this to the addendum as an addendum.

I don't know, but some more points from Lewis Barry Chafer regarding the characteristics of the law. And so with the remaining time, I'll just go over these things that I just drew out from his book, Grace. big book on grace, but he deals with the law a lot.

So first of all, he says that the human family had walked before God upon the earth for upwards of 2,500 years prior to the imposition of the law. Thus, it had been demonstrated that God is able to deal with men in the earth without reference to the law of Moses. And that's how we started out the lesson for today, that God was carrying them on eagle's wings in grace before he gave them the law. The period between Adam and Moses, there was no law, but sin was in the world, of course, from the seed of Adam. and death passed all men because all men sinned. Death reigned, but sin wasn't imputed because there was no law.

And that's Romans 5, 12 through 14. The penalty of death or the reigning penalty of death is because of transgressing the law. But due to the inbred fallen nature of man, our dwelling sin nature, And you can say that infants die, innocent infants die, good people die without the law. And so that just says that sin is present within all mankind. And that's how none of these are delivered from physical death while Christ tarries to come again. So sin leading to death, the penalty reigns, but the sinning or the transgressions were not imputed until the giving of the law.

So again, why the law? It was added because of transgressions. We've seen that now many, many times. To give the sinning, and I use the word sinning as a verb there, an augmented character of transgression or to show the actual disobedience. From the fall of man, sinning was always evil. in the sight of God, or since the time of the fallen man, sinning was always evil in the sight of God.

The giving of the law of Moses to Israel did not result in them becoming an obedient people. No, it did not, did it? It rather proved their utter sinfulness and helplessness. And that's what the law was to show them, their helplessness. So that's why they should have recognized that They should have said, God or Lord, we cannot keep this law. Take us back to how we were because we're helpless against the law, right? The law was effective only as it turned the people to God for his mercy.

That's being their schoolmaster or child trainer. This training was immediately accomplished in like the sin offerings, which were provided typifying Christ's sacrificial death. So that was a little, think of it, that was something that God gave them a physical thing that they could see that they should have seen that there was going to be a deliverer someday that does the sacrifices that they did each day. Point number nine here, do we live under the law then?

No, according to Romans 6.14. But we do have these, Jesus spoke of his commandments, to love one another as I have loved you, et cetera. They're not the law, Schaeffer says, nor any aspect of the law. Rather, they constitute, the word commandment is entole.

They are charges or precepts or injunctions into the teaching of grace set forth by Christ. At most, you could say, There's the law of love or the perfect law of liberty. Those are principles of grace. Or you could say the principle of love or the perfect principle of liberty.

The Jewish element in the church, Schaeffer says, was slow to abandon law. And by the provisions of men, a double standard was suffered to exist for a time. One, the Jews had legality. and for the other, pure grace for the Gentiles. And you can see that duality in Galatians. Paul went to the Galatians who were Gentiles, and he brought nothing of the law to them. And he said, you're not under any of that. But the Jews, they were legalists.

And the Jews were trying to come into the Gentile camp and tell them what to do. Paul was actually, I was thinking about this, Paul is trying to protect his Gentile believers, new babes in Christ, against this legality from the Jews. So this duality existed, and it, and Chafer says, I think in the next point, that this, Paul never countenanced this double standard, or he never, he never put it to bed.

It's And the age-long covenant of works never really yielded completely to the new teaching of pure grace. And that goes on to this day. That's a good statement. That kind of double standard has never gone away because people can't get over their love for the all things law, right? So Paul, though Paul boasted in his Jewish bona fides, he was saved by grace and passed over into a new ground where there's neither Greek or Jew. Circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, servant, nor free.

But Christ is all in all from Colossians 3.11. And in view here is the new creation we have in Christ.

So those are the points that I wanted to end with from Chafer. And that concludes our study into the law. Now we move on to other things next week. Yeah, that's great, Andrew. That's great. Good. So yeah, that was a quick and dirty, but we're done with those six verses. So any comments or Questions? I guess we better get out of here. A little over. So I'll close us up in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for, for grace, pure grace that you've given us. And we don't, we're not under the elemental things of the law anymore. And we're, we have freedom in Christ and we, we thank you for that. And we pray these things in his name. Amen.