[00:00:01] Welcome to the River Church podcast. We're all about bringing the life, hope and love of Jesus to everyone around us. For more information, check out our
[email protected] Great. Okay, so we are continuing our series in Galatians. I just want to start with. Have you ever been promised something that you didn't get?
[00:00:27] Are you saying that because Mary J isn't here, Elizabeth. Oh, you are here. Okay, like kids.
[00:00:37] Like kids, remember this. I mean, you know the kids that say to you, like, but, dad, Mum, you promised.
[00:00:45] Yeah, ever that, hey, a treat that they didn't get. Staying up late, going out or whatever. Kids are like, oh, but you promised.
[00:00:56] You know, there's loads of. Yeah, we get into this thing of broken promises. But there's loads of broken promises across culture, isn't there? Like, we could talk about sports, couldn't we? And Alexander Isaac, at the moment, Newcastle, he's trying to leave and there's like, hey, Newcastle, you've broken this promise of it and things like that, isn't it? And there's loads of it across sport. There's loads of it across sport about players or managers that say, hey, I'm loyal to this club.
[00:01:26] We won't mention Sol Campbell at all. If there's any Tottenham or Arsenal fans in here, I know there's loads. But politics, politics. Hey, remember the promises of Brexit campaign.
[00:01:42] Do we dare?
[00:01:43] Am I standing on dangerous ground? The £350 million a week that's sent to the EU, that's going to revolutionise our NHS, where is it? We all want to know. And that's one of those things, isn't it? Broken promises and politicians seem to go hand in hand, don't they?
[00:02:03] Like, they all promise so much and so much sort of doesn't happen and they seem to go back. The U turn is a phrase that's sort of associated with politicians these days. And it's interesting to think because of that connection, interesting to think what this whole thing about broken promises has on us.
[00:02:25] Maybe as I've got older, I've just become a little bit more cynical about politics and politicians and maybe about just the whole world, a little bit more cynical about what's actually going to happen. It's interesting how cynicism affects us as well, personally.
[00:02:44] Maybe there's something, hey, have you ever had something where someone's promised something to you and something that you really, really, really want, that is really important to you and you really want that to happen and someone's maybe promised to help it make happen or Something like that.
[00:03:04] I think one of the things that maybe we tend to do is try and not believe is, you know, hopefully believe in someone.
[00:03:13] But we kind of circumvent it, don't we? We try to make it happen anyway, just in case that it doesn't come through. We kind of, you know, go around and organize things so that that happens. What we want to. We want to make it happen ourselves. And we're going to sort of link this into Galatians. So if you've got your Bibles, I will bring it up on screen. It's a chunky passage, Galatians 3 from verse 15 to 25, where Paul is going to go back on his journey and talk about the law, the law of Moses. He's been going through that. And one lens that we can have to look at this, you know, is what's gone wrong with the law is due to a lack of faith in God that, you know, that the law has become a problem because the Jewish people are not trusting God to fulfill his part in it, but want to attain what is promised through their own efforts.
[00:04:22] So they're not trusting in God's promises, but rather through the law that has been given to them. They're trying to gain their inheritance through a back door. Do, you know, try and sideline it. I'm not going to put all my eggs in basket and trust God in its entirety, but I'm going to go through this sighting and go through the law. It's kind of like a DIY project, isn't it?
[00:04:46] And this hopefully today, hopefully what?
[00:04:51] Paul is going to explain something about the law. And hopefully we can see this in Galatians today. And if hopefully we can see the difference between the law and God's promises, that will hopefully get us to trust God's More. More. Is that okay?
[00:05:08] Good. Okay, so we're going to read through Galatians 3. 15.
[00:05:14] There we go. 15 to 25.
[00:05:17] Brothers and sisters. It's the favorite. It's the most common communication. Salutation. That's the word, isn't it? Rather than anything else. It's brothers and sisters. We are brothers and sisters. Paul uses that loads. Brothers and sisters. Let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set us or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. Now maybe I just stop off a bit of explanation because you think that's not an everyday example to me. What's a human covenant?
[00:05:52] So actually they think that a better word probably is will.
[00:05:56] So in the fact that a person may make a will and it's been ratified, it can't be changed after that. That's the Paul's everyday example, okay?
[00:06:07] It says so it is in this case, the promises that were spoken to Abraham and to his seeds. Scripture does not say and to seeds meaning many people, but and to your seed meaning one person who is Christ.
[00:06:23] What I mean is this. The law introduced 430 years later.
[00:06:29] 430 years. Just how long the Israelites were in Egypt.
[00:06:35] So when the famine happened, Joseph with his many colors coat in Egypt leading and Abraham and family come to Egypt, they're in Egypt. 430 years. That's the tradition before they leave and God sets them free. Okay, so that's the 430 years. So the law introduced 430 years later does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. Thus. For if the inheritance depends on a law, then it no longer depends on a promise. But God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.
[00:07:16] Why then was the law given at all?
[00:07:19] That's the question we have, isn't it? Why then was it given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred to had come.
[00:07:32] I'm glad. Peter in his letters says that Paul's confusing and hard to understand. Because I find it confusing and hard to understand. Right. We get. There goes on. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. A mediator, however, implies more than one party. But God is one.
[00:07:53] Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God?
[00:07:56] Absolutely not. For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin. So that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.
[00:08:17] Last bit before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.
[00:08:28] So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith.
[00:08:34] Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, Lord. We just ask for your Holy Spirit to be present amongst us right now, Lord, as these words are important.
[00:08:51] They are your words spoken through Paul, Lord. They are for our instruction, for our encouragement and our teaching and our instruction under you. And I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would make them.
[00:09:07] Just explain them, Lord, into our hearts, Lord. Make them real. Help us to understand your word as we journey through this together. This morning. Amen.
[00:09:18] Amen. Great.
[00:09:21] So who's confused in this passage?
[00:09:28] There is this battle between the law and the promise, you know, and the law gets a very bad rap in Reformed churches, in Protestant churches. So after Martin Luther, we are reformed.
[00:09:45] And Paul gets this kind of very negative light about the law. And we pick that up, I think quite a lot and say we are a people of grace, not of law. And so the law gets a really bad rap.
[00:10:01] But it was put in place by God, so it can't actually be bad, can it?
[00:10:10] So the question we're asking is why was it put in place?
[00:10:14] What purpose does it have? Do we now as Christians totally ignore the law and do we disregard it in total?
[00:10:23] Or has it got something to teach us?
[00:10:27] And we can get cynical about the law, say it's of no use to us, but Paul will write in two Timothy, a letter to Timothy, that all scripture is breathed out and is profitable for our teaching and encouragement. So there must be something there for us to help us along the way. And I think it's useful to us as Christians.
[00:10:49] It is helpful to us.
[00:10:51] And we'll expand what I mean by the law. So I want to give you three things that the law is helpful to us before we talk about promises.
[00:11:02] So firstly, the law shows us how to be holy, right? The law, what Paul is talking about now here in this passage specifically is a law given to Moses.
[00:11:16] So all of them commands about sacrifice, about all different ways of life.
[00:11:22] And the law was given to the Israelites as they come out of Egypt. They were governed by Egypt, they come out of Egypt. We're forming a new people, right? A new community that are going to govern themselves.
[00:11:36] How do they do life together?
[00:11:38] What are they supposed to do? And so the law came through Moses, to them. And so it meant how to be holy, how to be like God in all things, be it marriage, parenting, family life, how to be like God in community, what it means for working, how to treat colleagues, what it means for social policy, for treating orphans, for treating the poor, what does it mean for justice, for punishment, for finance, for economics. All of these subjects are covered in the law to help them be like or represent God in the world.
[00:12:15] But there's also some strange things, isn't there, in the law?
[00:12:19] There's strange things, if you look back, why were they not allowed to eat pork?
[00:12:28] Why were they like a world without bacon? I just, you know, it's just hard, isn't it? It's hard. You know what? No fry ups. I mean, it's just, you know. Yeah, I won't say anything about vegan sausages right at the moment, but yeah, why were they not allowed to eat pork?
[00:12:47] And we could come up with suggestions. Hey, it's diseased or it's infectious or something like, try, try and make it reasonable to us.
[00:12:55] Try and figure out some reason, oh, that's why God did it.
[00:13:00] But if we could actually understand.
[00:13:04] Well, I think some of the things that we only try and follow laws that we think are reasonable.
[00:13:11] Anyone with me with that?
[00:13:14] Do you know, how do we do my thing?
[00:13:19] I shouldn't really say it, should I? In public anyway?
[00:13:24] How often do we obey the speed limits when we're driving?
[00:13:28] When we think it's reasonable at the time?
[00:13:32] There's other things in society where we just go and go, yeah, that doesn't sort of apply to me right at the moment.
[00:13:39] We kind of reason our way through it. Hey, that's not reasonable right at the moment.
[00:13:45] And we can take this with the law, can't we? We can take it with the things that God said.
[00:13:50] Hey, that's not reasonable right at the moment. There's not really a good reason for that to apply to me right now.
[00:13:58] But ultimately, why should we do what the law says?
[00:14:02] Because God said so, and he knows better than us.
[00:14:07] So it's part of us humbling ourselves to go, okay, God, you know better than us.
[00:14:12] I'm going to follow your instruction whether I like it or not.
[00:14:16] And we're also sort of inclined to really compromise as well, aren't we?
[00:14:22] What happened in the Garden of Eden?
[00:14:24] Did God really say.
[00:14:27] Did God really say that? And we want to sort of compromise and downplay the law, but the law there is for us to follow, and we must keep that in mind. It's for our benefit, not God's.
[00:14:43] Secondly, the law shows us we can't keep it ourselves despite the law given to us to follow.
[00:14:51] Actually, one of the purposes of the law is to show us that we can't follow it completely.
[00:14:56] Is that unfair?
[00:15:00] I bet you know, if you've got children, they say, that's unfair. I can't do that. We all think it's unfair.
[00:15:08] Why set a standard? God, why set a standard that we can't follow?
[00:15:14] Was to show us that we're not God.
[00:15:17] To show us that we're not perfect, that we can't do it in and of ourselves. We actually need to push into God and ask for his help to follow the law.
[00:15:27] We need Him.
[00:15:29] And to point us not only that is to go back to him and ask for forgiveness to show us that we need to go to him to be dependent upon God, that we are not in control.
[00:15:44] But there's an aspect of the law and Paul writes in this, doesn't he? He says, because of transgression in that thing, because of sin, the law was given because or due to sin. And there's another part in Romans where say that actually the law contributes to sin. There's more sin because of the law.
[00:16:04] That's a strange thing to say, isn't it? But have you ever seen this sign?
[00:16:11] Have you ever seen this sign?
[00:16:14] Now, there's some people in the room, right? You don't have to own up. Some people in the room. They go, I'm not going to stand on that grass because there's a sign there that says, keep off the grass. There's other people in the room.
[00:16:26] You don't need to confess. It is okay.
[00:16:29] They'll walk along, see a sign and go, I stepped on the grass.
[00:16:34] I stepped on the grass.
[00:16:36] And do you know what? Psychologists have done studies. There's such a term as psychological reactants. Apparently one coins.
[00:16:46] The presence of that sign means that more people step on the grass than don't. Did you know that another thing turned the forbidden fruit effect.
[00:16:56] Something is off limits.
[00:16:58] So more people try and get something that is off limits. Why?
[00:17:03] I'm just going to say because it exposes something wrong in our hearts, doesn't it?
[00:17:09] We want something that we're not allowed to have. Why? Because we're rebellious. We want to be in control.
[00:17:15] We don't want anyone to restrict our freed them.
[00:17:19] So we want to exert our own independence, our control.
[00:17:23] And so we step on that grass, we are in control. No one else can tell me what to do.
[00:17:29] But the law shows us, the law tells us that we can't do it all ourselves. We need God. And so the law says we can't do it ourselves. We need another way.
[00:17:44] We can only attain righteousness not through the law, but through another way. It's not sufficient to make us righteous before God. We cannot obtain perfection by the law.
[00:17:59] So one of the purposes of the law is to cultivate that humility in us.
[00:18:04] That resolve to say, I'm not perfect.
[00:18:08] I need God's forgiveness and grace.
[00:18:13] So if that's the law on one side, the other side Paul wants to tell us all about is the promise. What was the promise?
[00:18:20] What's the promise he's talking about? He's talking about a promise given to Abraham.
[00:18:24] It starts in Genesis 12 and it gets repeated in loads of different forms for I think Genesis 18:22, something like that. It gets repeated again and again. This promise and that promise to take Abraham, who was. Who had. Who didn't have any children, and to make him into a great nation and many people together.
[00:18:50] And that promise is not just a great nation, but it's also to inhabit a land.
[00:18:56] I found out this week while doing a bit of study. The promise for the land, the land that's entailed is so much bigger than the lands that actually Israel came to inhabit. Even at their foremost, it's massive compared to this small bit of land that they went to inhabit.
[00:19:15] And this promise of the land is that they would as a great nation, inhabit the land and live in peace and harmony. That's the promise.
[00:19:23] And so Paul was saying Galatians, we read last week. So then those are of faith, us are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
[00:19:33] Abraham had faith in God. And we of faith inheritance the promise.
[00:19:39] And he goes on verse 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, that's the nations, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
[00:19:54] So we received the promise that was given to Abraham through the Holy Spirit.
[00:19:59] In the Holy Spirit, we are a great nation.
[00:20:05] The church across the world, Christians together are a great nation that inhabit not just a land in the Middle east. We inhabit the whole earth.
[00:20:19] The whole earth. As the Spirit advances the kingdom of God throughout the whole world.
[00:20:26] That's the promise. It's realized in us as we know. It's not fully realized in us. We have the now and not yet. But when Christ comes again and fulfills everything, then we as God's people will inhabit the whole earth and live in peace and harmony. That is the inheritance.
[00:20:50] So how was the promise different to the law?
[00:20:54] Three Quick Ways says that the law was temporary, but the promise was eternal. The law was given. It says like a guardian, didn't they? In the last verse, he says the law was. It was like a guardian. We were locked up under a guardian. A guardian. The phrase that is used there is for they used to have servants that would look after children.
[00:21:20] Who wishes they had that?
[00:21:22] Yeah. And the servants would take. That would be in charge of. Like the children, they take them to school, maybe take their books and things and things to school. They'd bring them home from school. They'd make sure the children did their homework. They ate at the proper times. They went to their exercises or gym or stuff like that. And they did. So the guardian was there to train the child.
[00:21:49] I mean, that'd be great, wouldn't it, if we had one of those.
[00:21:53] But Paul says the law is like that.
[00:21:57] The law is like that to train, to train humanity, to train God's people. And it had a role in growing up humanity. And we've got the Scriptures now, we've got the Old Testament that teaches us about how it worked and how people reacted to it and how that they should work out things rightly and how that they did it wrong.
[00:22:22] And we've got all of that.
[00:22:24] And so we've got. We can learn from God's unfolding redemption plan right through the Scriptures. It's unfolding as God has got this plan throughout time.
[00:22:36] But the law finished, the Mosaic law, the law of Moses, it's not tessellated on a nice pattern on the floor. It's law of Moses, right? And it's finished now because its purposes pointing to salvation have been accomplished. And so Jesus has come and the law was temporary. Now, that doesn't mean that we aren't under any law because Paul will go on to talk about the law of Christ later on.
[00:23:08] And obviously Abraham had to follow God's instruction. Adam and Eve had to follow God's instruction.
[00:23:16] We are under a law, God's law, just not now. The Moses, the law of Moses, the law of that set of people.
[00:23:28] So we are still under that. But the law, that law has finished. The promises that are given to Abraham are eternal.
[00:23:38] There's a really strange bit. Oh, I'll go back. There we go. It says the law is mediated.
[00:23:44] Do you get that? Did you remember that verse in that that we threw? It was a really weird bit that said, hey, the law was mediated by the promise. But it said God is one.
[00:23:54] And this is really confusing. I'm glad I'm not the only one confused. I read back and it said someone had done a survey on different interpretations of one of these verses and said there was 300 different interpretations of this verse. So it's, you know, bear with us there. And Paul, I think Paul in this relies on a load of Old Testament knowledge.
[00:24:18] And I would believe that Paul had taught this into the Galatians church.
[00:24:23] And so they knew what he was on about because Paul had taught this before. Paul's referring to teachings he's given. Unfortunately, we haven't got those teachings and we can't actually ask Paul to come and explain it. So we have to sort of rely on how well we can do do through this. But essentially the law was given from God through Moses, the mediator to the people, right?
[00:24:47] The law given or through angels, they. There's a verse in Deuteronomy that says it was given to him via angels. And that's the tradition, that's the reference to it. But the blessings of the law came from the people doing the commands of the Lord, right? It was dependent upon them. That's what's mainly about two parties are part of this fulfillment. Yeah, the law given from God to the people through the mediators to parties. And the Israelites need to do the law to get the blessings.
[00:25:20] But the promise, promise of God?
[00:25:25] No, Mediator.
[00:25:26] The promise was uttered to Abraham and like it was just given to Abraham, no one else is involved.
[00:25:38] The promise is uttered by God who fulfills it, God himself.
[00:25:44] That is why the promise is greater.
[00:25:47] And then lastly, the law leads to condemnation, but a promise leads to justification. Because no one can keep the law in its fulfillment. It can only lead to a guilty verdict, right?
[00:26:00] He can only say, hey, you're not good enough.
[00:26:04] And that's his point, isn't it? To show us we're not good enough.
[00:26:09] And while the law is for our benefit, to teach us how to live, it's not meant to attain righteousness for us. But the promise of Abraham was one of blessing.
[00:26:23] And Paul uses this language of blessing and justification and inheritance, you know, interchangeably. The. The blessing from Abraham, the promise on Abraham. The blessing is our inheritance, our justification, our rightness before God, that we receive through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:26:50] The promise to Abraham of his blessing, his inheritance comes to us becoming children of God, becoming citizens of the kingdom of heaven, to live eternally in paradise as heaven comes down to earth. That is our promise that we receive through accepting Christ's death in our place.
[00:27:19] And I want to say, I just want to finish by saying this should tell us something of the God that we worship.
[00:27:30] This should tell us something about God.
[00:27:35] This should tell us reflect over him. Because sometimes we battle around these words that God is sovereign, right? He's over all, he's faithful and he's good.
[00:27:51] And those are words I'm sure you know, I'm sure you know them. And you know, you say it. And we sang it this morning in loads of different ways. But we can maybe get a bit too familiar with them, can't we?
[00:28:05] Hey, hey, God is good.
[00:28:08] We said it many times this morning.
[00:28:10] But hey, if God wasn't sovereign, then how could he make a promise?
[00:28:18] How could. If God wasn't in charge, how could he have made that Promise.
[00:28:23] Because if he wasn't sovereign, then he's got no power to keep it.
[00:28:28] He's got no power to make sure that it happens. God has to be sovereign.
[00:28:32] If God wasn't faithful, then would he. Would he have changed his minds?
[00:28:39] Could he have changed his minds? Would he have gone back? Would he actually remembered the promise? It was so many thousands of years ago, Would he have remembered it at all? If God wasn't good, then would he have sacrificed himself to keep the promised?
[00:28:56] Would he have made the promise at all if God wasn't good?
[00:29:01] And in a world of so many promises, God is the only one that has promised us something this good.
[00:29:13] No one else has promised you anything that compares to the promise of God. Nothing is anything like it.
[00:29:20] No one can promise you eternal life.
[00:29:24] No one else can promise you that all your hopes and dreams were fulfilled. No one can promise you that all your illnesses will be healed.
[00:29:33] No one can promise you that you will live a life of eternal happiness in harmony and peace with one another. No one else can do that.
[00:29:44] Only God can.
[00:29:46] And in a world of false promises, God is the only one who has the power to deliver on his promise. Right?
[00:29:54] God is the only one.
[00:29:58] But in a world of broken promises, God is the only one who never lies, who never says something that he can't or won't follow through on.
[00:30:14] And I just want to finish by just taking a moment to just think about who God is. If the band could come back up, we're going to finish with a song.
[00:30:26] Just take a moment to say, God is the only one that you can trust with your life, with everything that you have to put all of your eggs in the one basket to think how it reflects on how you do life.
[00:30:46] God is the only one that you can trust.
[00:30:50] So I want to encourage you, encourage you to think about your life and think about this promise. Think about who God is.
[00:31:00] To know that you can put everything into his hands.
[00:31:05] Amen. Amen. Let's stand.
