Our Faith Is Based On The Unchanging Promise Of God - Galatians 3:15-18

I want you this morning to imagine in your mind a grandfather who owns a large piece of land, and one day he calls his grandson over and says, This land will belong to you someday, son, I promise. And then to make it official, he signs the deed, has it witnessed, and seals it legally so it cannot be changed.

Years later, other family members come along and start adding their own rules. One says, Well, you know, this grandson will only get the land if he works the farm perfectly for 10 years. Another says, Well, you know, he'll only receive it if he pays a large fee.

And then others come and try to add other stipulations and other rules, other conditions. But none of them actually matter. Why? Because the promise was already made and legally established by the grandfather.

Once that covenant was sealed, no one else had the authority to add conditions or change its terms. In the same way, God made a covenant promised to Abraham long before, some 400 some odd years before the law was even given.

God promised blessing and inheritance through Abraham's offspring. Hundreds of years later, the law comes through Moses, yes, but the law did not rewrite the promise. It did not add conditions to the inheritance promised to Abraham.

If the inheritance depended on law keeping, then the promise would no longer be a promise, just like the grandfather promising the land to his grandson. Paul reminds us here in Galatians 3, verses 15 through 18 this morning, that God gave this to Abraham by a promise.

So I want you to see this morning and I want to speak to you about the fact that our faith is based on the unchanging promise of God. We've been looking at this throughout chapter 3. As we've noted, it began sort of back in chapter 2.

But in chapter 3 so far, we've been seeing how Paul has addressed the fact that righteous people live by faith. They do not live by the law. This is important because if you go all the way back to chapter 1, the issue here with the Galatian believers is that they were leaving the true gospel for something that was not the gospel.

And so Paul is spending a great amount of this book outlining why the Judaizers are wrong, why a works-based mentality is wrong, and why the righteous live by faith. And ultimately, we're going to see in this section and some of the sections to come, is because God's promise is better.

God's unchanging, unalterable promise is better than anything else. And we're going to see that this morning, so we're going to dive right in and get started. The first thing we notice is that in verse 15, God's promise can't be changed.

Notice here in verse 15, it says,. And this is a general term in the original. It can be translated brothers, brothers and sisters. Brethren is probably my favorite translation, just simply regarding the believing ones, the brethren.

I speak to you in human terms. What he's saying is I'm giving you a human example to understand a godly principle. Even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it.

What he's saying here, he's not saying in the sense that even though in a comparative sense. What's being said here is he's saying, look, I'm giving you a human example. Just like or in the same fashion as a covenant among men or women or in a legal fashion, like we saw with the grandfather and his grandson.

You think about our day, we have last will and testaments, right? A last will and testament is your personal legal declaration of what happens to your belongings and your estate when you pass on. Now, in that sense, it is a one party document in a sense.

And it only relies on you saying this is what's going to happen. Now, he's saying that just like that, just like a human document or legal covenant or something like that, once it's been ratified, and this word ratified in the original is a word that means to make valid, to be confirmed.

So if you think a lot of times in Rome and in a lot of these places, we see this with Daniel in the lion's den, King Nebuchadnezzar put his seal, the kingly seal on the order. And no matter what anyone might have wanted to do at that point, no one could reverse what had been decreed.

So you see this all throughout history. There are certain ways of legally binding things, making things confirmed, and they cannot be changed. So when it says no one sets it aside, this phrase here in the original means no one can disregard it.

No one can do away with it. Or when it says add conditions, this is the understanding. You think about certain terms of certain documents and certain legal proceedings. Once the gavels hit the table, so to speak, once something's been confirmed, once you've signed on the dotted line, they'll tell you now, okay, once you sign, once you make this official, you can't come back later and add something to it.

It's binding. And that's what Paul is saying here. He says just like human documents, human legal proceedings that can't be changed, this is what God's promise is like. But notice here it says a man's covenant.

A covenant is a little different than a last will and testament. A covenant is a little different than just your basic agreement. Covenants were usually something between two parties. Now both parties would typically agree to some terms, and they would have certain ways of making it official.

So God's covenant, this particular covenant, is based on the one He had with Abraham. Now God's covenants are initiated and established by God. He ratifies His covenant with Abraham. He used a ceremony that was used in the ancient Near East at that time.

So this covenant He makes with Abraham about, if you'll remember in the previous verses in the chapter, how He says, you know, I'm going to make you a father of many people, a great nation, all the nations will be blessed by you.

And Abraham believed God. That was counted to him as a righteousness. This covenant made with Abraham, it was confirmed and ratified by a ceremony. So if you will turn with me to Genesis chapter 15, we're going to see the account of when this happened.

There was a particular ceremony and a particular way in which covenants were ratified during that time. Now, I have to be honest with you, I'm really glad we do not do it this way anymore, because it sounds like a lot of work.

But they had their way of doing things. Now, typically, if you think about today's world, like if you've ever signed mortgage payment papers, you know, you feel like you're signing your life away, because I think they flip like 25 different times.

Initial here, sign here, initial here, sign here. You're like, is this ever going to end? Well, at this particular point in time, there was a way they handled this. So in Genesis chapter 15, verse 1, it says,.

So here we have this promise repeated once again. And this promise is repeated in some other places that we'll look at with point number two. And so here we get the ceremony. God says to him,. And He brought all these to him, split them into parts down the middle, and laid each part opposite the other.

But he did not split apart the birds. And birds of prey came down to the carcasses, and Abraham drove them away. And now it happened that when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abraham. And behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.

And God said to Abraham, Know for certain that your seed will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. So let me just say here in passing, notice here, we have prophetic words being given to Abraham.

So four hundred and some odd years before the law even comes, many years before this would even be something that would happen, we have a prophecy here of the people of Israel going into Egypt and being enslaved for four hundred years.

He says, But I will also judge the nation to whom they are enslaved, and afterward they will come out with many possessions, which we know did happen with the Exodus. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

You will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they will return here for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. So here we have a prophecy of the full gamut of Israel here, going into slavery, coming out of it, and then coming back to possess the land.

And we can read about that in Exodus and throughout the book of Exodus. So now here we get to the part where the ceremony takes place. Verse 17, it says, Now it happened that the sun had set, and it was very dark.

And behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch, which passed between the pieces. Now this smoking oven and flaming torch were symbolic of God passing between the pieces of the animals. Verse 18, On that day the Lord cut a covenant with Abraham, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, so on and so forth.

So you see this ceremony take place in which God ratifies and says, This is my covenant. This is my promise to you. Now in a quote from his commentary on the book of Galatians, Pastor John MacArthur, who's now with the Lord, said the following about the ceremony to kind of explain it a little bit better for us out of Genesis 15.

Pastor John says, Ordinarily both parties to a covenant would walk between the slain animals, whose blood would symbolically ratify the agreement. So this whole ceremony was symbolic. It was a way of them saying, we are confirming what we've agreed to.

In this case, in Genesis 15, God alone walks through, indicating that this covenant, though involving promises to Abraham and his descendants, was made by God and God Himself. The covenant, therefore, is unilateral and entirely unconditional.

The only obligation in this covenant is on God Himself. He's saying, just like we look with the grandfather and the son, and you had all these family members trying to come in and make changes and add to it, and the grandfather says, no, I made the promise.

This land goes to my son. Same fashion, God has made the promise, and this is what's going to happen. And God's promise can't be changed. That's the reason He used this ceremony. Because He wanted Abraham and the people who would have understood what this ceremony meant, they wanted to understand, this covenant I'm making with you, this is not based like other covenants that may come down the line where God would say, you do this, I'll do this.

You obey me, I'll bless you.

This is unconditional.

I'm going to do this because I'm God. It's based on my word, based on who I am. I'm telling you this is what I'm going to do. And we know God can't change, and God can't go back on His word. So we see that God's promise can't be changed.

That's why it's better. And that's why our faith is based on the unchanging promise of God. Number two, we see that God's promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Going back to Galatians 3, look at verse 16.

Paul says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. So there's going to be a lot here that's a great example. You've heard me say this many times. There is no division between the Testaments.

The New Testament helps fulfill and explain the Old in many cases. And we always need to stop and take note when a New Testament writer, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writing under God-breathed Scripture, which is inerrant and inspired, when they quote the Old Testament and then explain it to us in a text, we need to pay special attention.

And we have that here in verse 16. He's referencing Genesis 15. The Jewish people that he was speaking to, particularly the Jewish believers, and even the Judaizers for that matter, but he's speaking to the Galatian believers, they would have understood very well because they were taught from the time they could breathe and walk, and as they grow up they were told every day about Abraham and the law and Moses and all this.

So when he says the promises spoke to Abraham, now they wouldn't have thought Genesis 15 because there was no chapter and verse divisions at that time, but they would have known it came from the Tanakh, the first five books of the Bible, and they would have known of what he was referencing here.

So he's saying these promises of Genesis 15, these promises spoken by the Lord to Abraham, they were to Abraham and to his seed, but notice here this explanation. He does not say, and to seeds, plural.

There's a reason why, take for instance in Acts 3 .25, in Peter's sermon in Acts 3, which we've already covered, so we're not going to spend much time here before, but you remember we covered verse 22 of Acts 3.

He quotes the Old Testament. Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. To him you shall listen to everything he says to you, obviously pointing to Christ. And it will be that every soul that does not heed the prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.

And likewise all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward proclaim these days. It is you, the people Peter was speaking to, who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made to your fathers, saying to Abraham, and in your seed, singular, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

For you first God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways. So we have Peter in the book of Acts preaching. We have Paul here writing to the Galatian believers and they're saying the exact same thing.

They're noting that all the promises to Abraham were to his seed singular. You saw it in Genesis 15. You can turn with me or you can just listen to me cover these quickly. We see this in Genesis 13 verse 14 through 17.

It says, And the Lord said to Abraham, after Lot had separated from him,. Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are northward and southward and eastward and westward. For all the land which you see, I will give it to you and your seed forever.

Verse 16, I will make your seed as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your seed can also be numbered. We see it also in Genesis chapter 17. In Genesis chapter 17 and verse 7 it says, I will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed singular after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your seed after you.

And then also finally we see in Genesis 22 verse 18. It says, In your seed singular, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have listened to my voice. Now, why is this important? Why is it important to note and to point out that all the promises to Abraham through to him and to his seed singular?

You say, Well, there's many believers. He says your seed is going to be the stars and the sand. Why the emphasis on the singular seed? Well, Paul explains that to us. He does not say and to seeds in verse 16 of Galatians 3 as referring to many, but rather to one.

And then he very plainly explains it to us. And to your seed, that is Christ. So he quotes the Old Testament, likely either Genesis 15 or maybe even Genesis 22 18 here. We see that in Acts 3, Peter's quoting Genesis 22 18.

You have two New Testament writers, both under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, quoting the Old Testament promises and telling you point blankly without any confusion that the seed that was being referred to in the promises is only and can only be Jesus Christ.

He says that is Christ because God's promise to Abraham is only fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Now, we as believers, and we'll get into this in more detail and really hash this out and work through this more as we get towards the end of Galatians 3.

But suffice it to say for today, where faith comes in and where the number of the stars and the number of the sands of the sea and all the believers, where we come in, it's not that we fulfill the promise or that we are the seed in which all the nations are blessed, but we are joint heirs with the seed.

We are joint heirs with the one who fulfills God's promise. And you'll notice this. We'll see this in a minute in verse 15 when it talks about for if the inheritance was by law or by faith and that whole comparison, the focus and the thrust of this is the inheritance.

Remember the story at the beginning? The grandfather promises to his grandson, he says, I'm going to give you this land. It's an inheritance. It's not something you earned. It's not something that you work for.

It's not something that came into your possession on your own means. It's something that was given to you. Something that was passed down to you. Same type of language, same type of understanding here.

God promises to Abraham, here's what your inheritance is going to be like. And remember in Genesis 15, it tells him the people are going to go into enslavement. They're going to come out of it. They're going to come back to the land.

You're not going to see any of it. You're going to go to your father's, meaning you're going to go to the grave. At a good old age, Abraham, you're going to live a long time, but you're not going to see any of it.

But Abraham still believed God that his promise would be true. And we see this as remember in Acts chapter 3 where Peter quotes the Old Testament. He says, Moses told y 'all, I'm going to raise up a prophet.

This servant is going to be raised. He's going to save you from your wicked ways. The entirety of Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, all of it is summed up in Christ. Jesus Christ is the answer to every single question as it pertains to redemptive history.

There is no question, no piece of the puzzle, no part of this covenant that can be answered or fulfilled outside of anything other than Christ. And that's what we see here in verse 16. Now, we see that God's promise can't be changed.

We see it's fulfilled in Christ. Number three, we see that God's promise can't be voided. Verse 17 of Galatians 3, it says here,. And what I am saying is this, the law which came 430 years later does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to abolish the promise.

This promise that came to Abraham came before the law. No other word, no other action can change what God has said. No person or created being can void God's promise. And that's what it means here in verse 17 when it says, the law which came 430 years later does not invalidate a covenant.

This word invalidate in the original language means to render void or it means you would render void or deprive something of its force or authority. So nothing about what man does, nothing about what man thinks, no matter what anybody says or does, it cannot void, change, or rob God's promise of its power.

We see this all the time in our day. It's amazing to me and I find myself saying this in so many cases. It matters not what man thinks but what God has said. You see it so many places. You see people using Christian language in political circles to try to score political points and they think they're being cute but they're not.

And they misuse and abuse God's word for their own purposes. So ultimately what they're taking is what they think and they'll utilize scripture if it helps them out but it does not matter what they think it was meant for or matter what they think they can use it for.

It matters what God has said. The consistent literary understanding and you see this so many times where somebody will interpret something over here and apply certain rules and they'll come over here and use something different and I have to remind them you need a consistent hermeneutic.

We apply and interpret scripture consistently and according to the plain reading of scripture and that's what Paul is doing here. He's saying I'm applying these standards to the Old Testament and what we see is that the seed was Christ and also what we see is that even though the law came into the picture and when God gives the law he says I mean this is all throughout.

The book of Leviticus.

And Numbers and Deuteronomy you read this over and over he says I'll make this covenant with you not the covenant to Abraham but this other covenant. I'll make a covenant with you Israel. Obey me and I'll bless you.

Follow my law and I'll bless you. This was true. This actually happened. And of course we see throughout their history Israel was always covenant breakers and couldn't hold their end of the deal. Well just because these other covenants came into the picture after Abraham's covenant does not change or void the promise made to Abraham.

It can't be voided. It can't be altered. It can't be changed. Well why have the law? Well we'll deal with that more next week but in passing let me say well what's the point? Well you're going to see as you move through Galatians 3 the point of law is to expose sin.

The point of the law the point of having law anyway is to expose the fact that if God were to have a covenant based on works if God were to have a covenant based on what man could do no flesh would be saved.

Going all the way back to chapter 2 verse 16 when he says we know that man is not justified by works no flesh can be saved apart from Christ and he's explaining to you from the Old Testament.

Why that is.

Because Jesus is that promised prophet. He is that promised Messiah. He is that promised servant. He's the one that fulfills the covenant. He's the one that initiates the covenant. He established the covenant and he fulfills the covenant.

He has nothing to do with mankind except that we are saved by it. We come into covenant blessings because of what God has done not because of what we have done and that's why it can't be voided. If it was relied upon us you'd constantly have covenantal issues as you see in Israel's history.

He brings Babylon primarily because of covenant breaking. They couldn't keep the law. They couldn't obey. They couldn't do what they were supposed to do and he kept telling them.

If you keep sinning you keep sinning.

I'm going to send judgment. I'm going to send Babylon. They just didn't listen. And they didn't listen to the point that they actually went out and found teachers that would tell them what they wanted to hear.

And Jeremiah, we can't have him run around. Jeremiah was running around preaching the truth of God's word telling them what was really going on. You see this all the time in life, right? You ever have somebody that's like a drug addict or they're in some type of deep sin or whatever it is and someone comes along and they try to tell them look, let's be real about this.

Some of us that are the ones going to help the other person we don't always handle it that well but there are a lot of times where people do handle it well and they try to tell them the truth. This is bad for you.

You shouldn't be doing this.

This is harmful.

It's hurting your life. It's hurting those around you. And do they want to hear it? Sometimes sadly no. And sometimes people don't want to hear it to the point they get so stubborn about it that they double down in it and their life's destroyed.

That's why he's telling them listen to me, obey me. I'm the one that can bring you life. No, we don't want to hear that. We don't want to hear that. Oh, but these priests over here they're telling us what we want to hear.

Let's go listen to them. And Jeremiah's telling them.

Judgment's coming.

And God even tells them through Jeremiah these priests and these supposed elders that are teaching you something false they're going to die in the street. And then we find in Lamentations chapter 1 that's exactly what happened.

It says they breathed their last in the city streets. God will not take... There's a lot of things that God is very graceful about. One of the things he's not very graceful about is the misuse and abuse of his word.

That's why every preacher that ever stands behind a pulpit should have a sense of trembling about them. Not an abject fear to where you can't perform or do what you need to do or say what you need to say.

But it's a sense of trembling and awe and reverence and fear knowing that the word you're preaching is not yours.

You didn't write it.

You can't own it. It's not based on your authority. And we've seen many people reap a lot of judgment and consequences based on their criminal mishandling of God's word. It cannot be voided. And that's a source of joy for us.

Because think about that. I mean there's a lot of negative there we just covered but there's actually a lot of positive here.

Think about it.

That means when God tells you you're saved based on the finished work of my son Jesus Christ and just like I promised Abraham I promised to you that your faith based on my unchanging promise is what's credited to you as righteousness.

You can take that to the bank my friends.

No created being.

Can change God's promise to you. I don't care if it comes from the TV. I don't care if it comes from the internet or a book or so and so down the road around the corner who's always telling you you can't believe that God stuff.

You can't believe that Bible stuff. It's all lies. You're wasting your time. Or even religious folk that will tell you well you've got to do this. We've dealt with all that with our discussion on legalism.

You've got to do this. You've got to do that. Like the family was in the example well he's got to pay a fee or he's got to work the field for 10 years. The grandfather says.

No sir.

No ma 'am. I made a promise and it's on the basis of that promise that my grandson's going to get this land. And I think sometimes if you're like me doubt can creep up in your mind. Any good Christian we have doubts about things.

You mean a preacher has doubts about stuff?

Yeah.

Come to my house every now and then. If you ever want to know what about me just ask my wife. She'll tell you the truth. And if I haven't told you already I go through stress and doubts and I hate to admit it but part of church is open public repentance.

I doubt God and I question Him sometimes. I have to repent for it later. But I've done it. Why is this happening?

Hello.

I shouldn't have to go through this. Why did you let this happen? Why am I dealing with this again? We all do it right? Now look. Christian maturity calls us to grow out of that. To grow into a place where we shrug things off better and I am getting better at that as I get older.

But sometimes even in those moments you can try all these techniques. You can try all these things to try to grow your maturity and get you to recognize things and these things can be helpful. My friends I'm telling you right now the number one thing that will get you out of that mindset of doubt and questioning God faster than anything else remind yourself of the promise He has made to you.

Oh.

No matter what I face.

This is temporary. It's temporary.

It's not permanent. Even if it's medical disaster, financial disaster, vocational disaster, family issues, whatever it is,.

It's temporary.

God's promise is eternal and permanent. You can't change it. I can't change it. Man can't change it. It is permanent. Which brings us to our last point and some of this we've already covered so this point won't go as long as the others as we wrap this up here.

But the last thing I want to point out to you this morning that God's promise is not based on man's performance. Look at our last verse for this morning. Verse 18 it says, For if the inheritance is by law, it is no longer by promise.

But God has granted it to Abraham through promise. Notice that phrase there. If the inheritance or the blessing is by law, it is no longer by promise. What's Paul saying? He's saying if your blessing and your inheritance and your eternal life is by works, man's performance, how good you can be, then it's based on that.

It's not based on promise. If it's based on promise, then yes we are created for good works in Christ Jesus as believers we're to be working and growing in Christ and living a Christian life. We're not talking about that.

We're talking about man's justification. Unsaved people, how do they become saved? If it's based on your performance,.

You're in trouble.

Because no flesh will be saved that way. But it's not. It's based on promise. It's based on the unchanging promise of God. If the inheritance promised to Abraham, if the blessing of eternal life and righteousness were based on men keeping the law, then it would not be based on what God has said but on what man can do.

You see, that's the difference. That's the distinction. Do you, my friends, and this is rhetorical because I know all of you are saved in here and you'll agree with this, but rhetorically speaking, would you want your salvation?

Do you want your eternal destiny to hinge on what the eternal God who created you has said and promised?

Or do you want it to hinge.

On what you could stand before God and present to Him based on your works?

I'll take the first one.

Because I know me.

And I cannot produce what would be necessary. But Jesus Christ can and He did for you. God's covenant stands because God does not change His Word. The blessing, the blessing for you, my friends, the blessing for me, comes the same way Abraham received it.

By faith. Our faith is based on the unchanging promise of God and the promised offspring, the seed, Jesus Christ. And so I leave you with this. The believer's hope rests on something unshakable. Not our performance, but the unchanging promise of God.