You are Sons of God through Christ

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Alright, good morning.
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Open up your Bibles to Galatians chapter 3.
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And we're going to read verses 25 to 29.
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Lord willing, we may end the chapter today, but that will depend on several mitigating factors, not the least of which is how many comments I choose to stop and make.
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But hopefully you guys see...
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Expository preaching is the preaching of the text of the Bible where you draw out from the text what it's saying and you put it on display.
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You're exposing what it says.
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And typically that's done in a verse-by-verse fashion.
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That's why I preach the way that I do.
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One verse at a time going through books of the Bible.
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And it takes time to do that, to study and to draw out from the text what's there.
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And it has a two-fold value.
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One, it's a good way to study as a congregation, as a group.
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But it also teaches you how to study.
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It teaches you how to observe the text, how to interpret the text and how to apply the text.
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That's the three parts of Bible study.
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Observation, interpretation, and application.
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And a lot of people don't know how to observe.
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They don't know how to see what's there and therefore they go right into the interpretation.
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They don't even interpret right because they're not observing right.
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Or they jump right to the application.
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They try to make application of something they don't understand.
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If you don't observe properly, if you don't interpret properly, then there's a good chance you're not going to apply properly the text.
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And so that's all this is.
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Somebody says, what's preaching? Read the text, interpret the text, apply the text, and move on.
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That's my job.
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It really is just that.
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Read it, interpret it, apply it, move to the next one.
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So we're going to start in verse 25.
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We're going to see if we can get down to verse 29 and if so, we'll have completed three chapters today.
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Beginning at verse 25 it says, But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
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For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith.
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For as many of you, as were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.
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There is neither Jew nor Greek.
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There is neither slave nor free.
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There is neither male and female.
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For you are all one in Christ Jesus.
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And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.
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Father, I thank You for this time to be here this morning.
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Lord, first of all, I want to pray and ask that You would give me a measure of strength and Lord, an extra measure of Your Spirit to preach Your Word today with power and conviction.
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I pray that You would, Lord, keep me from error for the sake of Your name, for the sake of my conscience, and for the sake of the hearts of the men who are listening to me preach.
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I pray, God, that You would forgive my sins, that You would cause me to decrease so that Christ may be increased.
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And Lord, ultimately, that the Holy Spirit would be the Teacher.
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For Lord God, if the Holy Spirit doesn't teach, it would be like the one who builds his house without the Lord.
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For the one who builds without the Lord certainly builds in vain, and the one who teaches without the Spirit certainly teaches in vain, simply speaking into the wind.
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Father, help us to know You and experience You today in our time of study.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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Now that faith has come.
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That's what verse 25 says.
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But now that faith has come.
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Last week I tried to explain a little bit of what that means.
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And I want to start with that today to ensure that we understand the concept that the Apostle Paul is trying to get across.
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Now, I'm not sure who was the last person to teach.
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This was Souders' stuff.
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Well, I hate to erase it, but I'm going to need to.
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But what's interesting is we're going to talk a little bit about baptism if we get to verse 27.
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So, I may come back to some of this, but I'm going to need to erase it for now.
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Jacob's priest.
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He's got this sack of boobs.
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He didn't feel too bad when he took your sign down.
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What is it? He didn't feel too bad either when he took your paper down.
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Oh, well.
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It's still up there.
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It's under the ink.
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Oh, wow.
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Looks a little worse for wear.
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So, as a reminder of what Paul says in verse 25, he says, Now that faith has come...
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And I want to remind you what he's referring to.
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I like drawing timelines.
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It's sort of my thing.
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So you come back to the time of Abraham.
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God speaks directly to Abraham.
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And here we have the promise that God makes to Abraham.
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The promise God makes to Abraham first is in Genesis 12 when we have what's called the Abrahamic Covenant.
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Then we have the reiteration of that covenant in chapter 15, where in chapter 15, God tells him His descendants are going to be like the sand of the sea.
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And Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.
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That's Genesis 15.6.
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Then in Genesis 17, we have the introduction of the covenantal sign.
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You know what a covenant is.
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Remember we talked about that.
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A covenant is a promise.
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It's something that God makes.
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He makes a covenant with Abraham and He gives Abraham a sign.
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And do you remember what the sign of the covenant was? Circumcision.
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You're going to remove the foreskin of your flesh and the foreskin of your children.
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And throughout their generations, they're going to remove the foreskin on the eighth day as a reminder of My promise.
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And so the people of Israel would bear this perpetual mark that would always remind them of the promise that God had given to their father Abraham.
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And the mark would be somewhat of a private mark.
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It's not one that you walk about showing people, but they would know that they have it and it would be one that was very obvious to any outsider that this separates them from the rest of the world.
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And that was the act of circumcision.
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After Abraham, there are Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve sons of Jacob.
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Then you have the twelve sons of Jacob end up in Egypt as a result of having sold Joseph into slavery.
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After being in Egypt for about 400 years, there is an introduction of another very important person whose name was Moses.
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Moses is used by God to bring the law.
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And remember, Paul is making a distinction in the book of Galatians between the law and the promise.
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Remember what he says about the law.
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The law is inferior to the promise in several ways.
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One, in simply how it was given.
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The promise was given directly by God to Abraham.
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No intermediary.
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The law was given from God through angels to Moses to the people of Israel.
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There was a double mediation.
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The angels and Moses both functioned as mediators between God and Israel.
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Moses, in that sense, acted as both prophet and priest.
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He spoke as a prophet when he spoke to the people of Israel.
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He spoke as a priest when he spoke to God.
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Remember, that's the difference in the two roles.
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A priest's job is to speak to God on behalf of the people.
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The prophet's job is to speak to the people on behalf of God.
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And Moses' function was both.
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He would speak to the people on behalf of God.
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He would speak to God on behalf of the people.
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And so there was an intermediary that brought the law.
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And that's one of the ways that Paul tells us that the law was inferior to the promise because it came through an intermediary.
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And he tells us also that the law is inferior to the promise because the law does not have the ability to save.
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Law is no Savior.
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If I could sum up Galatians in one sentence, the law is no Savior.
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We are saved, justified by grace through faith and not by works of the law.
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For by works of the law will no one be justified.
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This is Paul's point.
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So the question is then asked, well, if the law can't save, if the law is no Savior, then what good is it? What purpose does it serve? That's the question Paul is asking.
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The rhetorical question that he's asking in chapter 3, if the law is no Savior, what is its purpose? And we are told its purpose in chapter 3 when Paul says the law was the guardian.
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And the other words are tutor, schoolmaster, and these are all based on the Greek word pedagogos.
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And he says the law functions as a guardian until faith came.
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What did we say last week? What Paul is not saying is he is not saying that prior to that, nobody had faith.
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That's not what he's saying.
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Because we know that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, so Abraham had faith.
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We know Moses believed God and listened to Him and gave His Word to the people.
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We know Moses had faith.
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We know Joshua and Caleb who went as spies into the land of Canaan and came back and said, we can go and we can be victorious because God is with us.
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They had faith.
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During the time of great persecution and falling away in Israel, God says to the prophet, I have reserved for Myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
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You remember that? 7,000 people had faith even though the prophet felt like he was all by himself.
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He says, no, you're not by yourself.
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I have reserved for Myself 7,000 people who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
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So we have people of faith throughout the Old Testament.
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Every prophet was a man of faith.
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Every person we read about in the Old Testament that did great mighty works for God was a person of faith.
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If you go to Hebrews 11, what is Hebrews 11 called? It's called the Hall of Faith.
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And it goes all the way back to the early part of Genesis and it outlines for us all these people of faith.
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Noah and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all these.
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And it says these are the great Hall of Faith.
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Even some people that surprise us on that list.
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Rahab, the prostitute.
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She was commended for her faith.
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So when Paul says, when faith comes, we're no longer under a guardian, people say, well wait a minute, faith was already here.
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People already had faith.
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How can you say when faith comes? What you need to understand is he's talking about the faith.
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And when we add the article the, when you add the definite article to the word faith, you're now not just talking about faith like your faith and your faith and your faith, but you're talking about well, yes, you're right.
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You're talking about the faith in the Savior, the Christ.
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You're talking about Jesus.
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You're talking about faith in Christ.
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And the faith refers to Christ.
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So, did the people of the Old Testament believe in Jesus? Well, it's not intended to be a loaded question.
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I guess it could be.
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I'm not one for trick questions.
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When I say, did the people of the Old Testament...
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Go ahead, BJ.
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Yes.
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But, while not to disagree necessarily, yes, when they believed in God in the Old Covenant, they believed in the triune God even though they didn't fully understand His trinity in its fullness.
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Neither really do we.
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But we understand at least more than they did that when we speak of God, we're speaking of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, One Being in three Persons.
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I don't think the Old Testament saints understood that in its fullness.
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In fact, I think part of the reason why the trinity was veiled in the Old Testament Scriptures was because of the necessity that the people of Israel understood that they worshipped one God.
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I think if the trinity would have been something that was revealed early, then it would have been easy for the people of Israel to believe they worshipped many gods.
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They worshipped the three gods.
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So, I believe part of the reason for the veiling in the Old Covenant of the trinity was to ensure that the people of Israel remained a monotheistic people.
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See, as Christians, we are monotheists.
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We are Trinitarian monotheists.
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That means we believe that God is one God in three Persons.
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But it is one God.
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He is one God.
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There is Unitarian monotheism that says God is one Being and one Person.
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That's like your Jehovah Witnesses and your Unitarian church and things like that.
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So Unitarianism is not the same as Trinitarianism.
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And I don't want to get off into that because we could go down a rabbit hole.
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But the point of the matter is this.
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The Old Covenant saints did not have the full revelation of God that was given in Jesus Christ.
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Therefore, when the Apostle Paul says now that faith has come, what he is saying is now the revelation of Christ.
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The fullness of the faith has come.
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He is not saying that in the Old Covenant they didn't have faith.
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What he is saying is that in the New Covenant they have a faith that has the fullness of the Gospel that was not there before.
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The Old Covenant saints did not understand.
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I don't believe the Old Covenant saints understood the fullness of what was coming.
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Now, I asked earlier, did they know about Jesus? And some of you said yes, some of you said no.
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One said it was a trick question.
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It's not a trick question.
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Jesus says in John 8.58, before Abraham was, I am.
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So we know, as you said, B.J., Jesus has always existed.
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And Jesus said to the Pharisees, Abraham, look forward to My day.
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Which means to us that Abraham knew at least in some way, shape, or form that there was coming a Messiah.
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That there was coming a Christ.
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Moses said this.
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He said there is going to be one who is raised up from among you who will be like Me and you should listen to Him.
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He is referring directly to the person of Jesus Christ.
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Not Joshua, because that's how a lot of people interpret that passage.
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Joshua would be like Moses, but not in the way Christ would be like Moses, because Joshua would not be like Moses in the way that Christ was prophet and priest, as Moses was prophet and priest.
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Jesus was also the third.
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He was prophet, priest, and king.
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And so Jesus comes and He brings the fullness of the faith.
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And when Jesus brings the fullness of the faith, it says we are no longer under a guardian.
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So the guardian, or the law, functions until here, and then the function of the law is accomplished.
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Yes? That's why in 11 and 1, that's why the first word is now.
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Now faith is.
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Now they found out.
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Which? Are you talking about Hebrews 11? Oh, okay.
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It says now faith is.
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Read the whole verse.
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Now faith is the substance of things, therefore the evidence of things.
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Yeah, the word now there though is referring...
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I mean, you could say...
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You're kind of connecting it to what I'm saying about faith having come in Christ.
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But the writer of Hebrews is simply in 11 and 1 defining what faith is.
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You know that now...
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I don't think the now there is the same as the now in Galatians 3.25 is what I'm saying.
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When you get to the word now, it does always have significance, but sometimes it's simply a way of differentiating the then and the now in the text that you're reading.
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And so what is the context of Hebrews 11? It's coming on the heels of 10 and he's saying now faith is because he's just been describing the fact that we come to Christ through faith and this is what faith is.
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Now we know what faith is and it's evidence of things unseen.
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So I'm not sure that the now there is exactly the same context as Galatians 3.25.
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I just don't want to read into something that's not there.
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But again, back in Galatians 3.25 it says, but now that faith has come, that now is referring to this time period in history, the time when Christ has come.
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Now that Christ has come and with Christ the faith in Him has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
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We talked about this last week.
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That means we're no longer under the law.
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Does that mean that we now are free to sin in any way that we want to? God forbid, right? That's what it says in Romans 6.
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We are no longer under a guardian, but that doesn't mean we are free to sin as we choose.
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Why are we no longer under a guardian? Because you remember what the guardian's purpose was.
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We talked about this for the last two weeks.
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What was the pedagog? What was his job? Discipline the child.
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Is that what you said? What did you say? Yeah, discipline the child, right? So the pedagog was the slave who was chosen by the master to follow the child and administer discipline to the child so that when the child was doing what he shouldn't do, the pedagogos would be his disciplinarian.
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When did that stop? Yeah.
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That's right.
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And at that point, they were no longer under a pedagogos.
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They were no longer under the guardian.
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At that point, they were now truly sons.
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Because up until then, they were really in the same position as the slave.
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Because up until that point, they were under the discipline of the slave.
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And they were functioning not as a son, but as a slave.
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But now notice what he says.
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Read verse 25 and 26 with that in mind.
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But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.
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You see, when Christ came, He changed the relationship from that of being under the taskmaster, under the disciplinarian, under the guardianship of the pedagogos.
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Now we're not under that anymore.
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Now we are sons of God.
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One of the worst things in the world is people who think that they are sons of God simply by the fact that they are God's creation.
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And I hear people say this all the time.
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We're all sons of God.
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No, you're not! You say, but I'm created by God.
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That means I'm a son of God.
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No, it doesn't.
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There's a very common misunderstanding.
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It's very popular in some societies and groups and brotherhoods.
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They have this thing, the universal fatherhood of God, the universal brotherhood of man.
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Maybe you've heard something like that.
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Neither one of which is biblical.
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You are not a son of God by virtue of being created by God.
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And people who say we are all sons of God are wrong.
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And I'll show you.
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I'll just prove it.
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Turn with me to John 1.
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Go to verse 11.
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John 1.11 Alright, hold on a second.
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We'll read it together.
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John 1.11 says, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.
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Now, very quickly, it's talking about Jesus.
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Jesus came to His own.
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Who was His own? The Jewish people.
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And it says, And His own people, that being the Jewish people, did not receive Him.
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Is that true? Absolutely.
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Even to this day, Jewish people do not receive Him as their Messiah.
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Verse 12 But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.
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What? I'll say it again.
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To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.
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Now, the next part is even more important because it says, Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
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So listen to this, what John is explaining here about Jesus.
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Jesus came into the world, and He came to His own people.
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He came as the Messiah to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
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He said that.
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I came to seek and save that which was lost.
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And He says, I have not been sent to the world, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
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That was His primary goal.
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That was His primary mission.
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In fact, the Gospel later would say, the Gospel came to the Jew first, and later to the Greeks.
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Jesus came to His own people, and His own people did not receive Him.
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They did not want Him to be their Messiah.
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They did not agree that He should be their Messiah.
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They did not want Him.
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But verse 12 says, those who did receive Him, some of them were Jews, some of them were Gentiles.
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At this point, it didn't matter.
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It says, to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave them the right to become children of God.
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If anybody has ever told you that you are a child of God by nature of your birth, they lied to you.
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Or they were mistaken.
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Yes? Well, typically if somebody refers to a man of God, they're talking about somebody who's doing some kind of ministry work.
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That's a little different because they're referring, like if somebody said, well, Keith, you're a man of God because you're a pastor.
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Or Pastor Mark's a man of God because he's a pastor.
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That's the kind of use of man of God.
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That's not quite what this is saying.
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A lot of people believe that everyone is a child of God, but they're not.
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That's what I'm trying to get across.
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A man of God is usually for someone in ministry.
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Yes? Yes, Pastor.
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That brings to mind, in Romans 8, verse 9, we're talking about the Spirit.
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You know what I'm saying? He says, but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.
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He told me that the Spirit from God dwelleth in you now.
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If any man is not the Spirit of Christ, he is not of His.
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Yeah, if you don't have the Spirit, you're not His.
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So like I said, my point is that the mistake that people make when they say we're all children of God.
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No.
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We become children of God.
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Yes? And Paul is explaining 1 Corinthians 15.
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Even if you had 10,000 guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
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But in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Gospel.
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Well, yeah, but that's Paul explaining his relationship to them as the one who led them to faith.
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He was like their father in the faith, sort of like he talks about Timothy being his son in the faith.
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That's not quite what I'm referring to.
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I'm talking about the relationship that you have with God.
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Some people believe they have a relationship with God from birth.
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Like I was born and I am a child of God.
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No, what I'm saying is we become children of God understanding the Bible through faith.
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Yes, yes, that's right.
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You become a child of God when you are adopted into the family of God.
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And that's an important word.
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I'm going to put that on the board.
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So that being adopted through by faith and by the Word? Say it again.
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So we are adopted through Christ Jesus through the Word? We are adopted by God by being united with Christ.
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We're going to get there because Paul actually says that in a minute.
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Go back to Galatians and look at verse 27.
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We haven't gotten there yet, but this is what verse 27 says.
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For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
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Notice what it's saying there.
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When you come to Christ, you become united with Christ.
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And in being united with Christ who is the only begotten Son, you become part of the family through the process of God adopting you through the Son.
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I have five children.
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Sorry.
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Something came into my mind.
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The old joke.
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I have five children.
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The reason why I have five children is because I do not want six.
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That's an old joke.
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No, I love my children.
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But two of my children are adopted.
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They came not through the union of their father and their mother.
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My wife and I, they didn't come through the union.
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My wife and I, they came through the union of their father and mother, but through a process of having lost the parental rights, they were put into foster care.
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My wife and I met the children.
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We fell in love with the children and we adopted them into our family.
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And when we adopted those children into our family, we had to go before a judge and we had to say before a judge that we were willing not only to care for the children, because that's important, certainly, and not only were they to get the name, that's important as well, but these children would now become our legal heirs.
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So that if I were to die and my wife were to die, these two children, who did not bear our DNA, who do not have our family genes, but these two children would be our legal heirs.
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And all that is ours becomes theirs upon our death.
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We have a birth certificate for our children that has our names on their birth certificate.
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Their parents' names aren't on it.
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It says mother, Jennifer Foskey.
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Father, Keith Foskey.
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And for my son, he was born in a place I've never been.
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It says where he was born, but I've never been there.
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But if you didn't know he was adopted, virtue of just the paperwork, I could show it to you and you wouldn't know the difference between my son Cody and my son Justice.
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If I said Cody is my son and JJ is my son, and I showed you birth certificates, you couldn't tell the difference between one and the other.
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And I try to tell my adopted children, I say what's great about you is I chose you.
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The other ones, I just got what I got.
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But...
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It's just what came out.
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But for Ashley and Cody, we actually had to go take classes to become foster parents.
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We had to give up 40 hours of time.
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We had to sign papers.
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We had to have our home inspected.
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They even came and tested the temperature of our refrigerator to make sure that we had a safe place to store food.
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They scraped the paint from our walls to make sure there was no lead in the paint on our walls.
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They made sure that they were putting them in a safe home.
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We had to put locks on our medicine cabinets.
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And I took my firearms and I put them at my dad's house because I didn't even want to have to go through the battle of having to do the extra paperwork to have firearms in the home.
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All those things.
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Because we wanted those children.
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We wanted them and we adopted them and now they are just as much ours as the others.
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They don't even...
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They even look like us.
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It's kind of funny.
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My daughter, you know, she's got a broad face like mine and people just say, she looks just like you.
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I say, well that's weird because she has no genes of mine.
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And the point I'm simply making is I guess in a way I have a little bit more of an intimate knowledge of adoption than a lot of folks because of having two adopted children and I can say beyond shadow of a doubt that I love my adopted children with the same fervor and the same affection that I love my other children simply by the virtue of the fact that they're mine.
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And Christ is God's Son.
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He is called the monogamist.
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That's the Greek for only begotten.
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He is the unique Son of God.
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He is absolutely unique.
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There's not another one like Him.
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And God loves His Son in a very powerful way which makes it even more amazing that He would give His Son a sacrifice for sin.
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I couldn't give my child to sacrifice Himself for sin.
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But God so loved the world that He gave His monogamous Theos, His only begotten Son to come into the world, to die for sin.
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And through dying for sin when Christ did that and He actually took the punishment of the Father.
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Isaiah 53 tells us it pleased God to strike the Son.
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Why? Because in striking the Son He could not have to strike us.
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Christ is taking the punishment that we deserve so that we can go free.
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And what happens is we place our faith in Christ and we become united with the Son.
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And when we become united with the Son, we have the same benefits and the same inheritance as Christ.
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If something gets amen, that ought to get amen.
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You understand? That's the point.
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We have been united with Christ and therefore we have been adopted into the family of God.
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You were not born into the family of God.
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You were born again into the family of God.
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That's why Jesus said unless a man be born again, he will not see the Kingdom of Heaven because if you're born once, you are born a child of hell.
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But if you are born again, you are made a child of God.
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And there is the difference between the one who is born once and the one who is born twice.
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The one who is a child of the devil and the one who is a child of God.
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Amen two times.
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So that's what he's saying.
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He says now that faith has come, we're no longer slaves.
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We're no longer under the pedigogos.
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We are now sons.
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We weren't sons before, but we're now sons through faith.
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You know, that was one of the most difficult things for the people of Israel to understand about the ministry of Christ was when Christ came, He talked about God as Father.
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Go into the Old Testament and read and you will not see God talked about as Father as much as He's talked about as Lord, Creator, Master.
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Those words.
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But when you come to the New Testament, Jesus says, Our Father who art in Heaven.
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Oh Father, I pray not for the world, but for those who You have given Me out of the world.
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Father, glorify Me with that glory which We shared before the world was.
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Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.
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Father, if it be Your will, take this cup from Me, nevertheless not by will, but Yours be done.
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Father, Father, Father.
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Over and over and over.
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Jesus expresses the language of sonship.
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And that sonship becomes ours through faith.
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Not by keeping the law.
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The law wasn't intended to bring us to be sons of God.
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The law was intended to show us our sin.
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And now Christ comes and we are made sons through faith.
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And then in verse 27, He shows us how that works.
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He says, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
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You have put on Christ.
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Now, I mentioned earlier, Pastor Mark had an outline of what baptism is.
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I didn't memorize it, but he talked about baptism meaning to be submerged in water.
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He talked about the fact that it was identification with Christ and that it was an example of your faith to the world.
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Is that right? Am I remembering correctly what was up there? Maybe I'm saying it a little bit different.
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But I want to add a thought.
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And I'm certainly not dismissing what he says.
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I agree with what he said.
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I want to add something that baptism is often missed as this aspect.
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Baptism is a sign of the covenant.
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It is a sign of the new covenant.
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Think about the covenants through the Old Testament.
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Every one of them had an accompanying sign.
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God made a promise.
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God gave a sign of the promise.
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Go back to the promise God made to Noah.
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I'm never again going to destroy the world with water.
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What was the sign? The rainbow.
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Later, God gives a covenant to Abraham.
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All the nations of the world will be blessed through you.
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What was the sign of the covenant? Circumcision.
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Later, God made a covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai.
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And we have what's called the Sinaitic Covenant.
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What is the sign? This may be a little bit of a harder one.
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What's the sign of the Sinaitic Covenant? The Ten Commandments.
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Yes.
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It's actually the Sabbath.
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The Sabbath is actually said to be the sign of the covenant God made with Moses.
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The keeping of the Sabbath.
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The seventh day where they would rest and do no work.
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Not even pick up sticks.
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We read that it was the sign.
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That's why it's included in the Ten Commandments.
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Because the Ten Commandments is the table of the covenant.
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That's the covenant.
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And the sign was the Sabbath.
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Then God made a covenant with David.
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Now this one's even more difficult because the Bible never identifies a sign with David, but what do we think it is? Close.
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The throne itself.
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No, the throne.
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David's throne.
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Because he's told, your throne will not depart from Israel.
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There will always be a king on your throne.
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And so the throne is now occupied by who? Jesus, right? So Jesus sits on the throne of David, right? So we believe the throne is the sign of that promise that David would not have his kingdom go away.
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It will perpetuate forever.
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And that's why Jesus, when He came in on the donkey, He was called, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
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Blessed is He who comes to reign on David's throne.
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Yeah, the Palm Sunday, right? He's coming.
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The Son of David is here.
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The One who is here to take the throne of David.
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So with every covenant, there's these signs, and the signs are...
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I used to think about, and this may be sort of a silly example, but I used to think about like, we have in America, we have logos.
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Businesses have logos.
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If you see Golden Arches, you know it's bad food.
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If you see an Apple logo, you know that's a computer.
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You know because we know how easily our minds are connected to things that we can see.
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And the signs represent something greater, right? The Apple logo represents the Apple Macintosh world.
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The McDonald's logo represents that restaurant.
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And all of these different things, they have these signs and these logos.
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What's the word logos? From the Greek for word.
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It's the word that tells you about that.
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And so we have, in the Christian faith, two signs that are given to us that are meant to represent something greater.
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The first sign is baptism.
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Baptism represents union with Christ.
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How do I know that? Because Romans chapter 6, buried with Him in baptism, raised to new life.
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You've died with Christ.
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Now you walk in the newness of life.
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Paul said that.
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He says, I have been crucified with Christ.
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Nevertheless, it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
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In the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for me.
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So when I get baptized, it's a symbol of dying and rising.
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Born again.
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Right? That's the picture.
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And that's what the sign represents.
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It represents union with He who died and was resurrected.
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I'm dying.
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I'm resurrecting.
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I'm going under the water.
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I'm coming back out.
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If you've never been baptized, let me say this to you today.
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If you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you should not hesitate to follow after Him in baptism.
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Now I will say this, you should not run to baptism if you are not fully convinced that He is your Savior either.
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But, there should be no one who says, I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, I have Him as my Savior, I want Him as my Lord, and I sacrifice and serve Him, but I will not be baptized.
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That just doesn't work.
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Because why would we want to be identified with Him by word, but not be identified with Him with the sign that He gave us for that identification? Well, it's a picture of that.
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But it doesn't wash it away.
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Our sins are cleansed by Christ on the cross.
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Our sins are cleansed and we come to Christ in faith.
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Baptism doesn't save us.
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And that's a whole other lesson because there are some people who believe you're not saved unless you're baptized.
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I'm not saying that.
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But what I am saying is this, if you are saved and you haven't been baptized, then my question is why? Why would you say, I don't want to be identified with the sign that Christ gave me to show that identification? Why would I not want to come under the waters that symbolize my relationship with Christ? Why would I not want that? And so that's an important question.
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And Paul says here, he says, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ and put on Christ, that's union.
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When you're baptized, you're saying to the world, this is my new outfit.
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This is my new clothes.
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Not the water, but the Word, Christ.
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He is now, I have been clothed in His righteousness.
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We think about, and I just don't understand why people would not want to be baptized.
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So again, my encouragement to you is if you haven't been, and for some reason you're holding out, maybe you say I'm not good enough.
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Well, no one has ever been good enough to truly warrant anything from God.
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The Bible says we come naked and we have nothing to bring except desperation for Christ.
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Now we can finish.
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We have a few minutes.
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We'll finish the chapter because the last two verses, and I may come back to verse 28 and make a few more comments next week, but just to finish it out.
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It says, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
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There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free.
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There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
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And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.
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Now, here's what you need to understand about that statement because it seems to come out of nowhere.
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It seems to come out of nowhere.
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The whole Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, female.
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Why in the world is Paul mentioning these three things? That's true.
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All that's true, BJ.
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That's correct.
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I'm going to add a little something to it in a minute, but let me go ahead.
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Do you have something to say? Racial, social, and gender distinctions that say Jesus was invited into Christ in order to receive His mercy.
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All people equally can become God's heirs and receive the answer of His eternal promises.
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Yeah, that's true.
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And I'm getting there.
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I promise I'm getting there.
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Yes, Bob.
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Wasn't it a common prayer segment? Yep.
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Is that in your notes, or is that something you've heard in the past? Well, I've heard it before, but didn't notice it.
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Yeah, that's what I was trying to get to.
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The common expression among Jewish men was, God, I thank Thee that I am not a slave, that I am not a Gentile, and that I am not a woman.
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And so that's where this comes from.
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God, I thank Thee that I am not a slave, that I am not a Gentile, and that I am not a woman.
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Because the Jewish man felt very prideful in his Jewish maleness.
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I'm not a slave.
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I'm a Jewish free man.
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I am not a Gentile.
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I'm a Jew.
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And I'm not a woman.
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I'm a man.
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And so Paul, in his sometimes sarcastic way, he's saying, when you come to Christ, there is neither slave nor free.
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When you come to Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile.
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And when you come to Christ, there is no male or female.
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Because the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
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That's the point.
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You cannot come with any sense of pride to the foot of the cross.
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So yeah, you're right.
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I believe based on that simple prayer of arrogance, Paul is breaking down that prayer and saying no.
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Now, I want to make, and again, I might come back to this next week, because I've had a lot of people use this passage to try to argue that this means that there's never any distinctions to be made.
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And like for instance, in our church, we do not allow women to be pastors.
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We do not believe women should be pastors.
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And they'll say, wait a minute, in Christ, there's neither male nor female.
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And our response has always been that we have to look at the whole of Scripture and the Bible forbids women from being pastors in 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14.
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You say, well, how do you look at this passage? Because this is not talking about positional leadership in the church.
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It's not talking about positional headship in the home.
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This is talking about spiritual desperation at the foot of the cross.
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Because in my home, my daughter's saved, my wife's saved, but I'm still the father.
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And that position doesn't change.
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My daughter gets saved and she says, hey, I'm one in Christ Jesus.
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I guess I'm authority just like you.
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No, it don't work that way, sweet cheek.
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And in the church, we have elders, we have deacons, and we have the church.
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And someone says, well, why can't a woman be an elder? Because Paul says that he does not allow that women would teach men in the assembly.
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That they would not usurp authority over men in the assembly because there's a certain positional authority that God has given to men that He hasn't given to women.
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And that positional authority is not intended to be usurped or destroyed because of this truth.
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This truth is a spiritual truth.
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And here's the spiritual truth, and it's really easy.
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Every one of you are desperately in need of Christ.
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And every one of you, when you go to Christ, you are no better and no worse than the person beside you.
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You all equally need Him.
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Whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're a Jew or a Greek, whether you're a slave or free.
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And think about the story of Philemon.
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Philemon was a slave who had run away.
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And Paul sent him back.
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Now, he said to his slave master, he said, you can receive him as a brother or you can take him back as a slave.
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He'll do whatever you tell him to do.
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I encourage you to take him as a brother.
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But the point of the matter is, he didn't say there's no slaves or free men.
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At this point in history, slavery was a little different than it was in the Old South.
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But it was still a different model of economic behavior.
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But the point of the matter is, Paul is not throwing down all economic structure.
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He's not throwing down all household structure.
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He's not throwing down all societal structure.
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What he's saying is, when we come to the cross, there is no man and woman.
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There is no slave and free.
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There is no Jew and Gentile.
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There is no American and Chinese and European.
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It's all equal at the foot of the cross.
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And if...
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This is verse 29 and we'll finish here.
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And if you are Christ's...
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He's already told us we're sons of God in verse 26.
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But now he says, if you are Christ's, then you are sons of Abraham.
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You're Abraham's offspring.
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So the whole argument of this whole chapter has been this.
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You don't get saved by the law.
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You get saved by the promise.
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The promise was given to Abraham.
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And the promise given to Abraham is yours because the promise given to Abraham was that Christ would come.
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And if you're in Christ, you're part of the promise.
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If you're not in Christ, you're not part of the promise.
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So the question would be this morning, are you in Christ? If you are, then you are heirs of God and sons of God through Him, having been adopted into the family of God.
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And if you are not, then you are outside of the covenant and you are desperately in need of turning from your sin and turning to Christ in faith.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for this time of study.
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I pray that it's been useful and encouraging.
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And I pray, Lord, that You would use us to remind us of our desperation and need for Christ.
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There's no man here that is so good that he doesn't need Christ.
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And there's no man here so bad that Christ cannot save him.
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So, Lord, let us remember that the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
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It's in Christ's name.
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Amen.