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- Go ahead and open your bibles and turn to Galatians chapter 3 Now we haven't been in Galatians for a year Oh this year? It's a new year Oh yeah, oh okay, hi Never gets old Yeah Yeah Alright we'll be back next year We uh It's uh 2016 In my bible Your bible? My bible We're back in our study of Galatians I'm looking out trying to see who's been here Who hasn't Cause you know you guys I preach verse by verse It's my Method of teaching So uh If you haven't been a part of this study Or you haven't been here or maybe you're new Maybe you came in over the holiday I've been out for a couple of weeks Um Then you might not know where we're at Or what we're talking about So I like to Give at least a little bit of a catch up So that we understand Sort of where we are In the text Um I did miss a lesson a couple weeks ago Christmas week I was supposed to be here but my daughter was in the hospital So She's okay, she had a very high fever And it lasted like 10 days And she had come to find out She had a bad infection and a virus At the same time So it was tough, especially for a two year old So we were in the hospital on Christmas morning Uh So that was an interesting way to spend The holiday But we got to go home Christmas night And have our time with our other kids And uh This is the first Sunday After the new year, right? Yesterday was New Years? So I guess I only missed one week Yeah, okay Alright, so Alright, well The book of Galatians Is Paul's Uh Paul is addressing a group of people Called the Galatians This is a This is actually a group of churches In an area which is now Referred to as Turkey But at that point would have been referred to as Asian Minor And The southern portion of that Is a group of churches In Iconium, Lystra And Derby And those churches he had gone in During his missionary journey And he had planted churches there And then he left To plant other churches in other areas After he left Other people came in And they started teaching A false message We see this In chapter one Paul says I'm astonished that you have so quickly turned From the gospel That I preached to you And you have turned to another gospel Not that there is another gospel But there is only one gospel And he Begins to challenge them In regard to Why they have turned away from the truth He then Goes through a series of Explaining Why His message and his ministry Is valid We see this at the end of chapter one And all through chapter two He is showing his Message is The message that is the true one And it's sort of like this You've got two competing voices You've got Paul's voice Who is giving one message And then you've got the other group That came in and they're giving another message And Paul's attempting to show Why he is the one that is accurate I mean you guys Have probably experienced this in your life Whether you've been around various religions Everybody thinks they're right Everybody thinks they've got it Nailed down But really at the end of the day There is only one right answer You may have heard That there are many ways to God You may have heard that we're all going To the same place We're just taking different roads We're all going to the same top of the mountain We're all just taking different roads That is wrong There is another way To understand And it is the way that Christ gave us In Matthew chapter seven Jesus said There is a broad way which leads to destruction And a narrow way which leads to life There's only two ways The right way and the wrong way And no matter what you are in If you are outside of Christ You're on the wrong way If you are not in Christ You're on the wrong path Whether you're a Mohammedan Whether you are a Buddhist Whether you are a Jehovah Witness Doesn't matter If you are on a way that does not follow Jesus Christ as the Lord of Glory You are on the wrong way There is no other gospel That was Paul's message It's been Paul's message since the beginning of the book So When we get to chapter two Toward the end he begins to explain Why his message is correct And why the message of the Of the false teachers is wrong And by the way if you've been here you know who the false teachers are The false teachers were the Judaizers You say well what does that mean? Well the Judaizers Were a group of people who said That unless you become a Jew You can't be saved And the way that you had to become a Jew Was you had to be circumcised Now most of you probably Well I don't know I don't want to get into this But I imagine a lot of you are circumcised Due to the fact that that's been A fairly traditional reality in America Especially for young Young men You know that they would be circumcised They would only be young men Sorry Sorry But At this particular What's that? No The reason people are circumcised today Typically is for traditional reasons There's even a debate As to whether it's a health issue I tend to think it's a health issue Yeah Infections and stuff like that There's a lower incidence Of yeast infections And Jewish women type thing There are some health issues But primarily it's a tradition It's a tradition And so And within the people of Israel it was a command It was a command of God Genesis 17 God says to Abraham You are to circumcise yourself and your children And their children's children And every generation that comes after Is to be circumcised As a sign of the covenant God had made a promise to Abraham And this promise was going to be accompanied by a sign Every promise God gives is accompanied by a sign Think about it Going back to the promise God gave to Noah What was the sign? The rainbow God gives a promise to Abraham What's the sign? Circumcision God gives a promise to David What's the sign? The throne He says your throne will last forever Christ is going to come And sit on that throne So the throne itself is the sign Of the covenant God made with David And then God makes a covenant Through Christ What is the sign of the new covenant? Jesus said this is the new covenant in my blood What is it? A little more specific The bread and the cup Jesus held them up He said this is the sign of the new covenant This bread represents my body This cup represents my blood So this is the sign of the new covenant And we also have in the new covenant Baptism Which is a sign of Entrance into the covenant You enter into the covenant By faith But faith is followed by Baptism We receive baptism as a sign of that promise Yeah It's an expression of our faith But it's also a picture of the promise of God We've been buried with Christ in baptism Raised a new life Yeah So all of that is to simply say When God makes a promise He gives a sign For the people of Israel were given a promise They were also given the sign The sign was circumcision So here Paul comes in and he preaches a message Of justification by faith alone Then he leaves And in comes this group of people The Judaizers and what do they say? No it's not by faith alone You must also be circumcised See the scripture says it Go to Genesis 17 Of course they didn't have Numbers but they would have said See here he said to Abraham You have to be circumcised Are you better than Abraham? Well we're going to get there But the point is they're saying your faith is not enough You have to do this Extra thing It's not just a matter of belief It's not just a matter of trust You have to add This thing and it wasn't just circumcision But it was The keeping of the law You have to be circumcised That was a primary thing You have to keep the Dietary restrictions What are the dietary restrictions of the Israelites? Can't eat pork Can't eat shellfish Certain types of washings All of these different things Can't have a bacon cheeseburger One because you can't have the bacon But you also can't mix dairy with beef So you can't have a cheeseburger Be that as it may The point is there were their dietary restrictions So you not only had the circumcision You also had the dietary restrictions And The restriction of Saturday On that day There is to be no work done That's called the Sabbath And the Saturday Sabbath Was a very important Standard It was a thing that marked out The Israelite people They were not to do anything And if you remember the Pharisees That was the group that Jesus was always battling with When he was on earth Because they were the religious zealots They were the religious men of the day Who were very conscious Of the law Those guys came up With all kinds of extra rules For the Sabbath The Sabbath just simply said don't work But they would say well you got to walk How much walking constitutes Working Well they would say ok so you can take this many steps Right Or you know They would have this many rules You might need water but you can only pull this much Up in a bucket or whatever There were all these standards and rules And that's where Jesus said You know you guys strain the gnat And swallow the camel And basically what he meant was You guys are pedantic About little things like how many steps You're taking or how much water you're drawing But then you go over here And you lie cheat and steal You swallow the camel You're so pedantic on the little things but you don't care about the things That really matter So Paul has planted these churches He has left Another group has come in They have taught What Paul gave you is not enough Yes faith in Jesus Is important Yes faith in Jesus is necessary But faith in Jesus Is not sufficient That's the message of the Judaizers Faith in Faith in Christ is necessary But not sufficient And Paul's response Is that that is A false gospel If someone tells you That faith in Christ is not sufficient That Christ is not sufficient That is a false gospel Understand? So based on that We get to chapter 3 And Paul uses Now The process He's made his argument That faith alone and not works Saves And not the law because you can't work your way into salvation Chapter 3 He gives us His argument Based on two things And we've already looked at chapter 3 verses 1-5 And that's his argument based on experience But then he Gives his argument based on Scripture So we're going to read chapter 3 We're going to begin at verse 1 but our focus Is going to be on verses 6-9 So again We're focusing on Verses 6-9 but we're going to read To establish context beginning at verse 1 O foolish Galatians Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes That Jesus Christ was publicly Portrayed as crucified Let me ask you only this Did you receive the Spirit By works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish Having begun by the Spirit Are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain If indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you And work miracles among you Do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Alright stop right there So his argument is simply this You have come to Christ You have been saved You have received the Spirit Did any of that happen by keeping the law? No! Does any of that maintain Is any of that maintained by keeping the law? No! As I've said and I've said this several times But again some of you weren't here It's like there's two mountains On that marker It's like you have two mountains One mountain is called law And the other mountain is called grace We try to climb Law mountain By doing good things By keeping the rules By doing all these things And we think that's how we get saved The problem is you can never make it up Mount law Because every time you start moving up Mount law you realize how much of the law You've broken You're stepping on stones That are falling underneath your feet The law cannot save you The difference between mount law And mount grace Is Christ picked you up And put you here You didn't climb it The Bible says in Ephesians chapter 2 That you were dead in trespasses And sins But God Being full of grace Made you alive In Christ And He seated you in heavenly places That's the work of God That's salvation Not what you have done for yourself But what God has done for you This will always be insufficient Your ability to keep the law Will always fall short So we have grace And grace Is not only necessary Grace is sufficient Because it is based on the work of Christ So that is The experience we have And that's what he talks about in verses 1-5 And now he's going to use Abraham As the example Look at verse 6 He says just as Abraham believed God And it was counted to him as righteousness Know then That it is those of faith Who are the sons of Abraham And the scripture foreseeing That God would justify the Gentiles By faith Preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham Saying in you Shall all the nations Be blessed So then those who are of faith Are blessed along with Abraham The man of faith Let me pray real quick This is the scripture I'm preaching on So Father as I begin to explain this text Lord keep me from error Lord use me to speak to these men And by your spirit Lord Those who are saved That they would be challenged And encouraged And Lord those who are not That today would be a day of reckoning And they might come to you in faith In Christ's name Amen So our primary goal today Is to get through verses 6-9 Verse 6 Just as Abraham believed God And it was counted to him as righteousness How many of your Bibles have quotation marks there? If you have ESV Then it's got a quotation mark Or it's bolded What version is that? HCSV Yeah, that's what I meant Yeah, the Holman does Anytime you see that Or you see quotation marks Basically what that's saying is This is something that's being quoted from somewhere else And you notice that's what he says He says just as Abraham believed God And it was counted to him as righteousness He's not saying that On his own accord He's saying that because it's written somewhere else Yeah, Genesis 15-6 In Genesis 15 Go back there with me Hold your place in Galatians But go back to Genesis 15 We have Abraham Having already received a promise From God He received a promise from God In Genesis 12 And we're going to talk about that in a minute But this Scene in Genesis 15 Is Abraham Being given a promise from God About his children This is after he's rescued Lot And I talked about this in our last sermon So if I'm repeating myself some Just know that this is important stuff And we should hear it more than once Which is The key to learning is repetition And repetition is the key to learning So in chapter 15 It says after these things This is after he's rescued Lot And he is given a Tithe to Melchizedek This situation has happened Now it says after these things The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision Fear not Abram, I am your shield Your reward shall be very great But Abram said, O Lord God What shall you give me? For I continue childless And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus And Abraham said, Behold You have given me no offspring And a member of my household Will be my heir And behold the Lord came to him The word of the Lord came to him This man shall not be your heir Your very own son shall be your heir And he brought him outside and said Look toward heaven, number the stars If you're able to number them Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be And he believed the Lord And he counted it to him As righteousness So there is the passage that Paul is quoting And Abraham believed God And he counted it to him as righteousness But the situation Is a situation of promise Abraham has received a promise From God, the promise is this You're going to have children Now Abraham's an old man, his wife's an old lady He hasn't had any children at this point Even though three chapters Earlier God promised him a nation Now three chapters earlier Several years before Was that, because I was just reading a little further Was that metaphorical Because it says the believers Understand then that those who believe Are children of Abraham Not metaphoric, but spiritual That's referring to We who believe the same as Abraham Are Spiritual descendants of Abraham Okay, so not necessarily bloodline Yeah, exactly And that's what we're going to get in a minute My point now is simply to say this God made a promise to Abraham in Genesis 15 And Abraham believed the promise That's it I mean that's simply it But he was thinking bloodline And he does get a bloodline He gets Isaac, Isaac has Jacob Jacob has twelve sons And 400 years later in Israel There's several million Jews Yeah, and again And even now If you read back in Genesis 15 He's already offering God an out God has offered him a nation And he's, several years later He's looking up to God saying God, I guess I'm going to have to choose This guy Eleazar of Damascus Who was basically the child Of one of his servants So he had In that time in history If you didn't have any children And you had these people that worked with you in your home Or worked for you in your home You would take one of their children as your heir That child would become The person who would take on Your property and your land Because it couldn't be a woman, it had to be a man And he didn't have any male children, he didn't have any children at all So he's got to give it to this boy Eleazar of Damascus, and God says No, it's not him It's not Eleazar of Damascus Not that there was anything wrong with him But he wasn't the promise Yeah, he wasn't the one that God had given to him He said, don't try to give me an out If God has made a promise You don't need to try to circumvent it And go a different way You need to trust that the promise is going to be fulfilled Right? Same way with this, because later This situation with Ishmael, hadn't had a child in a while No God promised it My wife's old, I'm old But her handmaiden, she'd be young So We can Do a little business ourselves Have a child, and what happens? All kinds of bad stuff Well yeah, it produced two lines And those lines are still fighting today But again God made a promise, and Abraham did believe it Even though there was that point Of trying to circumvent Abraham believed God Remember what I said last time He didn't believe in God He believed God There's a difference Every time I go out witnessing We do our booth at the fair I'm talking to people And people say, yeah man, I believe in God I don't care Demons believe in God James chapter 2 You say that God is one You do well, for even demons believe that And fear Believing in God Does not save you It's belief Of God Believing God that saves Not believing in Him God has made promises This is the promise This is the hope That He has sent His Son into the world To die, to pay the sin debt For everyone who believes in Him That's the promise You believe that or you don't And if you believe that, you are in Him And if you don't, you're not in Him Noah built this ark That God had given him But he still had to go inside Because if he stayed outside, what's going to happen? He's going to die If Christ is there, if we are in Christ, we are saved If we're outside of Christ, we're lost And we're going to die, we're going to go to hell It's a very simple analogy The ark is a type of Christ Come to me All ye who are weary and heavy laden I will give you rest Christ is the ark We go in and we're in Him Or we're not And that's the point Paul is making And Abraham believed God And it was accounted unto him as righteousness He believed God To the question again we should all ask ourselves Do we believe God? So now Moving back to Galatians That's the quote From verse 6 Now we're going to look at verse 7 Galatians 3, 7 Know then That it is those of faith Who are the sons of Abraham This goes back to your question brother Because you asked about spiritual versus metaphoric What he's saying is this If you believe God the same way Abraham believed God Then you are a spiritual descendant Of Abraham Think about this Remember when John the Baptist Was baptizing And the people said we're the sons of Abraham And he said God is able to raise up sons of Abraham Even from these stones Right He's saying something about what it means to be a son of Abraham Being a child of Abraham Was something the Jews Felt very proud of They took great pride In their relationship with Abraham By blood Well that's yeah Luke 16 It says that you're accepted where Abraham is And into Abraham's bosom That was known as paradise So Abraham was a very important figure And the people of Israel Felt very proud Of their relationship to Abraham But what does The Bible say It is those who are of faith Who are the true Sons of Abraham It's those who are of faith Who are the true descendants of Abraham What did Jesus say in John chapter 8 If Abraham was Your father You'd believe in me You'd do the works that he did If Abraham Because the Jews again they were saying Hey we have Abraham as our father If Abraham was your father You would do the things he did But you're not He believed in me Remember John 8 is such an important passage Because Jesus said Abraham rejoiced To see my day And they said you're not even 30 years old Or you're not even 50 years old I'm sorry you're not even 50 years old And you're telling us Abraham Has seen you What did Jesus say Before Abraham was I am Notice he didn't say before Abraham was He said before Abraham was I was It's John 8 58 by the way He said before Abraham was I am Now if you I don't know how many of you are able to come But we're doing our Greek class at the church Starting next week And I know some of you guys are going to be able to come But we're going to look At some of the language of the New Testament And that's one of the most important passages Because of the way that it's given in the Greek It's not Before Abraham was I was It's before Abraham was I am Why does that matter Well it is the tense of the verb is what matters But what It refers to the trinity What matters is the word The phrase I am Is the name God gives to himself In Exodus Moses said who are you Who should I tell the people has sent me You tell them I am Yeah that's right Yes sir Go ahead Because He said I am because he is He's everything He's everything that we need Everything we want Everything we see He's everything He's our all in all I'm sorry He changes at some point But I am is like he's constant Always been there Always will be there He doesn't change The phrase I am speaks to his Independent and self existing Nature God is not dependent on anything If I say I am I have to qualify that I am because I have the right amount of oxygen I am because I have the right amount of atmospheric pressure I am because I have the right amount of food I have the right amount of water I am because of so many things Upon which I am dependent God simply says I am Period I'm not dependent on anything God's not dependent on us He didn't create man because he was lonely This whole idea of God needing us God doesn't need you God doesn't need me God chooses to love us He chooses to use us Because that is in his nature He doesn't have to That's another point of his Great love is the fact that he loves you Even though he doesn't have to He makes a choice Brother BJ you were gonna Say something That's right for Christ Christ again one with the Father He is second person to Trinity And when he says before Abraham was I am He's referring to the fact that he's always been He is the I am And when the Jews heard that What'd they do? They picked up stones to throw at him They were gonna stone him Because they knew what he was saying He was giving himself He was equating himself With God By saying before Abraham was I am They picked up stones Man we gotta stone this guy he's saying he's God That's right And if he was not telling the truth He was blaspheming It's like C.S.
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- Lewis said He said Jesus is one of three things He's either a liar He's a lunatic or he's the Lord Because if he said The things he said and they weren't true And he knew it he was a liar If he said the things that he said and they weren't true And he didn't know it Then he's a lunatic But if he said The things that he said and they were true Then it's the most Important thing in the world And this is something else another theologian said this He said Christ Is either the most Important thing in the world or he's not Important at all He can't be middle Because of what he claimed He claimed to be God in the flesh And if he is that's the most important thing in the world And if he's not it's not important at all But he's certainly not halfway important He's certainly not middle Important it's either the most important Thing or it's nothing Again That's right So again If you come to faith In Christ You're a son of Abraham Because Abraham believed in Christ You say now how did Abraham believe in Christ Abraham lived A long time before Jesus Abraham lived some 2000 years Before Christ would come How could we Say Abraham Had faith in Christ Well that's what Paul is now going to argue And this is really where we didn't get to last time So I want to hope to get here now Because verse 8 I use verse 8 all the time When I'm trying to explain What we call in theological terms The continuity Between the Old Testament And the New Testament A lot of people focus on the Discontinuity Between the Old Testament and the New Testament And there is some discontinuity In this there are some things in the Old Testament That are abrogated In the New Testament For instance we no longer have to maintain the dietary laws I can eat a pork sandwich to the glory of God Praise the Lord And I'm thankful That's Acts chapter 10 right Take kill and eat Praise the Lord I can have a pork sandwich to the glory of God With cheese And I can wear Mixed fibers clothing I can have a 50-50 Polyester cotton blend There are things that the Old Covenant Would have forbade That are no longer maintained Because those were intended To separate Israel from the other nations And to show Israel What was called a peculiar people Or a different people Circumcision, dietary, clothing restrictions All these things were to show them A different people That they would be separate When Christ came into the world The Bible says He came to die For men of every tribe, tongue, people and nation He came to not Replace Israel But to expand The Gospel to all nations Where the Gospel had been held in Israel Now it would go to everyone Yes sir BJ So that was kind of like a picture Of what the Sanhedrin was Absolutely yes And you just nailed it By getting circumcision And showing that you were set apart From other people because of what God showed That's right Israel is very much a prototype Of the church It's a picture It's a type And the church is the antitype The type is what points to the antitype For instance in the Old Covenant You had the sacrifice That was the type Christ is the antitype Meaning the fullness or the fulfillment In the Old Covenant you had the ram Remember when Isaac was taken up the mountain And was going to be sacrificed And Abraham said Do not lay your hand on your son And he showed him there was a ram caught in the thicket That was a type Of substitutionary atonement Isaac gets to come off the altar The ram goes on the altar And there's a substitution made Same thing happens when Christ goes to the cross I should have been on the cross I get to come down off the cross Christ goes on to the cross for me And he becomes a substitute for me He's the ram So yes In that sense Israel is the type It's the picture of what God would do In the church for all people And nations He would take for himself A people from All tribes This is why it's stupid to be racist by the way And I know this is coming out of left field But there's no reason to be racist Because you're going to have heaven Full of black people, white people, Asian people And all kinds of other people Because the Bible says of every tribe People and nation There will be those people in heaven Now how we're going to look in heaven And all the differences, I don't know I might still look like this I hope not, it's a long time But the point is The gospel is The gospel is The expansion of the promise And this is what we see in verse 8 And again, I want to read it And then I want to try to explain it as best I can It says And the scripture Foreseeing That God would justify the Gentiles by faith Preached the gospel Before him to Abraham Saying in you Shall all the nations be blessed There's so much here to unpack Let me try in the short amount of time That I have to unpack Number one, it says the scripture Foreseeing that God Would justify the Gentiles preached the gospel The scripture In this sense Is the word of God Written down that we have It's Basically treating the Bible as it were A prophet The Bible is written by men of God It's written by prophets But it itself is just a book But in this text it says No, the scripture preached to Abraham And here's what's funny about that Abraham didn't have a Bible When was the Bible written? When was the first books of the Bible? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy When were they written? Anybody know? What? No, you're thinking of the Masoretic text I'm talking about when was it originally written 1620 Written by Moses Written by Moses Would have been in the desert of Sinai Somewhere in the mid 1400 B.C.
