Well, good morning, Bethany Church family. My name is Kyler Bell, and I am the high school minister here at Bethany. And do be praying for some of our students this week. And we had middle school spring retreat this weekend, so be praying for them as they return from retreat today. Be praying that the Lord would use those simple truths of the gospel from the weekend to change their hearts, change their lives, and encourage them in Christ. Well, we are currently in a series in the book of Galatians titled "Free For Good." And I want to draw your attention to Galatians chapter 3, verses 15 through 18. So please turn there in your copy of God's word, remain standing, and let's read these verses together. Verse 15, "To give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, 'And to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'And to your offspring,' who is Christ. This is what I mean: The law which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise."

Well, you may be seated this morning. Now, let's turn to the Lord in prayer and ask for his help. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the series in Galatians. I pray, Lord, that you would help us to understand the arguments that Paul will make in our passage this morning, that, Lord, we would glory in Christ, that we would see the greatness of the promise of salvation. And Lord, I pray that we would be greatly encouraged, and Lord, that we would understand it well in order to live out this truth in our lives. And so please bless us this morning, and we pray these things in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen. Well, as you know by now, Paul's letter to the Galatians was necessary for Paul to write because a group of individuals, known as the Judaizers, had infiltrated the Galatian churches with false hope, burdensome rules, and a corrupted gospel. And just as quickly as Paul could establish the Galatian churches with the message of faith alone, in Christ alone, the Judaizers arrived to undo the progress that Paul had made.

They argued that faith alone was not enough for one to be saved. According to the Judaizers, the Galatians would have to become circumcised. They would have to conform to the Mosaic law for their salvation. And so they mixed faith with works. They mixed the promise with the law. In the fallout, the gospel itself was at stake. The very existence of the early church was at stake. The consequences of the Judaizers' heretical teachings could not be more serious. The issues could not be more weighty. Heaven and hell hung in the balance because a gospel mixed with works is no gospel at all.

Now, this would not be the last time that the church would be confronted with this kind of false teaching. Nearly 1,500 years later, a Catholic monk named Martin Luther would read the same words written by Paul in the book of Galatians, and he would come to realize and understand the biblical doctrine of sola fide, salvation through faith alone. And this stood in marked contrast to the Roman Catholic teaching that stated that sacramental works and good deeds were necessary, and the basis and the grounds for one's justification. Salvation through faith alone then became the cry of the Protestant Reformation. And what were they protesting, and what do we continue to protest to this day? Well, we protest the false notion that salvation is achieved through any form of human effort, merit, or good deeds. And as Protestants, we must be clear on this issue. We must be clear that salvation is by grace, and it is by grace alone, that salvation is through faith, and it is through faith alone, and that salvation is found in no one else but Christ, and in Christ alone. And as Luther wrote, "If this doctrine stands, the church stands. If this doctrine collapses, the church collapses."^[1]

And so Paul, back in the 1st century, in writing to the Galatian churches, starts a protest of his own. Perhaps we can call this the very first Protestant Reformation. And he wrote to the Galatians to set the record straight, and he did so by engaging the Judaizers with their own arguments. And when we get to Galatians chapter 3, the Judaizers are making an argument that would go something like this. They would say, "Okay, Paul, we'll grant you that under Abraham, salvation was on the basis of faith alone. We'll grant you that. But that was only for a time, because when God gave the law to Moses, God changed the way salvation works from then on. And so now salvation is on the basis of faith and works. So enough with all of this faith alone business, Paul." Now, it's important to note for us this morning that the Judaizers agreed that salvation was through faith.

They would agree on that point, but they disagreed that salvation was through faith alone. And this subtle difference, according to Paul, was a departure from Christ, and it was a distortion of the gospel. And so what Paul proceeds to do in our passage this morning is make four arguments showing that the law did not change God's promise, that the law of God given to Moses did not nullify the promise of God made with Abraham. Salvation has always been and always will be through faith alone, sola fide. So our goal this morning is to trace Paul's arguments against the Judaizers, and Paul's argumentation in this chapter is heavily theological. It can become overly academic, and for those reasons alone, many have been dissuaded from wading into Paul's line of reasoning. But before you dismiss this passage as impractical, let me encourage you that there is nothing impractical about deepening your understanding of gospel truth and deepening your understanding of how God works in the Bible. And so this passage gives us this morning a unique vantage point of the glory of Christ, of the superiority of God's promise, and the hope given to sinners like you and me. And so let's examine Paul's four arguments together. And the first one is this, four arguments showing that the law did not change God's promise.

Number one, an argument from real life. God's promise is irrevocable. And so Paul's first argument is from real life. He says there in verse 15 that he gives us a human example, an everyday illustration. And Paul says in verse 15, "Even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified." And so the Judaizers claim that the law of Moses came along later and added works as a necessary grounds and basis for salvation. And so Paul is making the case that not only did it not happen, but it could not have happened. It was impossible for that to have happened. Because Paul is looking at the world around him, and he's acknowledging that there are certain standards by which the world is operating under, and that would make it impossible for anyone to add a codicil or an amendment to a will once it's been ratified. A third party, years later, can't come and fiddle with or tinker with a ratified will.

Now, in our own culture, there are plenty of legal loopholes to be discovered. But in Paul's day, according to Jewish, Roman, and Greek standards, a ratified contract was legally binding, end of story. In fact, in Greek context, if you made a will and you agreed to give someone your property or your inheritance upon your death, that will could never be changed, it could never be amended, it could never be canceled. Even if your relationship with that person would sour or if that person would betray you in some way, you were bound to the will. And this is the whole point that Paul is making. If a human will cannot be set aside or added to, how much more are the promises of God irrevocable? If man is held accountable to his word, how much more is God? And so once a covenant has been made, it cannot be rejected or abrogated or violated or set aside. There are no amendments, no codicils, and no changes. And so God made a promise to Abraham, and that promise was a promise of blessing, and it was a promise of salvation.

Abraham did not enter that promise on the basis of works. Abraham entered into the promise of salvation through faith alone. Genesis 15:6 tells us this. It says, "And he," Abraham, "believed Yahweh, and he," Yahweh, "counted it to him as righteousness." God's righteousness was credited to Abraham's account. Salvation was granted to Abraham's life, not because of his performance before God, but because of God's promise. Paul even explains in Romans chapter 4 that Abraham was circumcised after he believed and not before, to show that salvation is not through human effort, but through faith alone. Now, after God makes the promise to Abraham in Genesis 15, he ratifies the covenant in a formal ceremony. And if you remember, he has Abraham gather all of these animals. He has him cut them in two, place them on two sides, and this was a very common way of cutting a covenant in the ancient Near East.

As the covenant was made, both parties would walk through in between these animals that had been cut in half, affirming that the same should happen to them if they fail to keep the covenant, if they fail to keep the promise. Now, what is surprising about Genesis 15 is that God puts Abraham to sleep. Abraham is totally removed from this ratification ceremony. God is not making a covenant with Abraham. God is making a covenant with himself. Abraham is completely uninvolved in this process because the promise is not in any way dependent upon Abraham. It is entirely dependent upon GodAnd so God passes in between the animals, the promise is ratified, and there is no going back. No changes can be made. It is irrevocable, it is unchangeable, it is unbreakable. And not even the law given to Moses hundreds of years later can change the promise that God has made.

Now church family, you can trust the promises of God. We can often find it difficult to trust words of promise. We search for the fine print. We say, "That's too good to be true." We've experienced the broken promises of others through broken relationships, betrayals in friendships. And we even know ourselves well enough to acknowledge that we let others down with our failure to keep our promises. And as a father, I've been reminded that with my own kids when they say, "But Dad, you promised." We've let others down, we've disappointed others. We disappoint ourselves by our failure to keep promises, and there's a question that we ask, "Is there anyone who can actually keep their word? Is there anyone around here I can trust?"

And Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?" God's word is fixed in the heavens. It will not pass away. He is good on all of his promises. Not one of his promises will fail. And so finally, we are given a promise that we can trust. And I couldn't help but think of the hymn writer's words in my study this week, "Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father. There is no shadow of turning with thee.^[2] Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not. As thou hast been, thou forever wilt be."

Paul's second argument this morning is an argument from scripture, verse 16. An argument from scripture, God's promise is Christ-centered. And Paul's second argument is taken directly from the Old Testament. And the reason why God's promise still stands is because Christ is at the center of the promise. Paul writes in verse 16, "Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. And it does not say 'and to offsprings,' referring to many, but referring to one, 'and to your offspring,' who is Christ." Now, the word offspring is a word that can have a collective meaning or an individual meaning according to its context. It's a word like deer or fish or sheep. Only context is going to tell you if you're talking about an individual sheep or a whole flock of sheep. And the word offspring, also uses the word seed, is first used in Genesis 3:15, when God curses Satan and he says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring."

And so there is a collective sense of the word offspring being used there in the first half of the verse, and it's predicting this ongoing battle that's going to happen throughout all of human history between those who belong to the Lord and between those who belong to the Evil One. And then in the second half of the verse, there is a switch here. There's an individual sense. There's the word he, the singular pronoun. "He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." So from the woman's offspring, there is one individual in particular who will arrive to crush the head of the Evil One once and for all. And this is, of course, speaking of Christ. It's speaking of Jesus, and it's the very first Gospel promise that we are given in the Bible. Now, we go back to Galatians 3:16. First glance, you may think that Paul is using some sloppy hermeneutics, lazy exegesis, pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

How can Paul turn a collective sense of offspring into an individual sense? But in reality, Paul's exegesis, I believe, is sound. I believe he is quoting from Genesis 22:17 and 18, which actually does the same thing as Genesis 3:15. Paul is not ignoring conventional interpretive methods. He is actually paying very close attention to the grammar and to the details of the Old Testament text. And so God promises Abraham, verse 17, Genesis 22, God promises Abraham, "I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and as the sand that is on the seashore." So, so far, this is a collective sense of the word offspring. Offspring as numerous as the stars, as plentiful as the sand. This is a collective sense. But then there's a switch.

Notice this detail, the end of verse 17, "And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies." Now, the ESV does a good job in bringing this out. There are some translations that are kind of late to the party, they haven't noticed this. It's a singular pronoun, his enemies. And so we see here, from the collective offspring of Abraham, there is one individual in particular who will conquer his enemies. And then look at verse 18And in your offspring, still talking about the individual. This is still talking about that promised seed, the individual, shall the nations of the earth be blessed. And so we have this truth all the way back in the Old Testament, that union with this promised seed will bring salvation blessings. So what does this all mean? Well, it means that the promise of salvation is only made possible because of the fulfillment of Christ.

Christ is that promised seed. And so how does God keep His promise to bring salvation? He does so through Christ Jesus. And in fact, the New Testament will say as much. If you turn to the New Testament, the very first verse in the Gospel of Matthew tells us this. And so Matthew 1:1, it says, "The book of genealogy," and so I recognize at that point, you read that word and you're already skipping ahead. But it's too bad that you did, because you would've missed this. "The book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David." What does it say? The son of Abraham.

The son of Abraham. This is the promised one. This is the promised seed, the promised offspring of Abraham, that the New Testament is signaling to us that the promised offspring, the Messiah, has arrived, and he has arrived to bring salvation to all who would trust in him. He is the fulfillment of the promise. And in fact, Abraham knew that the Messiah was the promised fulfillment. He understood the weight of God's promise here. Jesus would say this in John 8:56. Jesus is debating some Jewish crowds, and Jesus says, "Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day." What day is he talking about? The day of the arrival of the Messiah, the arrival of Christ.

"Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it, and he was glad." So Abraham anticipated that Messiah Jesus would come. He knew that God would send a redeemer to bless all the nations of the world, Jew or Gentile, and that all can come to this savior of the world for salvation. And so how are the nations blessed? They are blessed through the promised offspring of Abraham, who is Christ. Now I'm a father of three little kids, and so this week as I was studying this, I couldn't help but think of that children's song, "Father Abraham." And in my household, I don't know about yours, but we sing Sunday school songs, not just on Sundays. Every day of the week, my kids are singing Sunday school songs. And I thought about this song, "Father Abraham," and you know how it goes.

I won't sing it. I'll read it. I won't sing it. I definitely won't dance to it, the whole hand motions. "Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you. So let's all praise the Lord."^[3] And of course, you got the hand motions, the right arm, the left arm, the right foot, and your whole body's involved. And by the end, everyone's singing and dancing, and it's a great time.

This children's song, though, is far more theologically significant and profound than you may realize, because there's a question here. How can I become a child of Abraham and know the promises of salvation made to Abraham? How can that be? And my imagination couldn't stop me this week from thinking that maybe this song is what created the whole mess in these Galatian churches. You can just imagine these Galatian churches, the Judaizers are there, and they're singing this song. They're singing, "Many sons had Father Abraham, I am one of them," and they're singing the song, they're doing the hand motions, doing the dance, and the Galatians come by and see it. And they say, "Well, that's a really great song you got there and a little dance. Do you mind if we join in with you?" And maybe they would say, "Well, certainly not, but you'll have to work for it. If you want to sing the song, you want to do the dance, you're going to have to work for it."

"Okay. Well, what do you have in mind? What do we got to do?" "Well, for starters, circumcision. You'll definitely have to get circumcised if you want to sing the song." "Okay. Anything else?" "Yeah, well, you'll also have to submit to the law." "Okay. Any part of the law in particular?"

"Oh, yeah, all of it. Keep it all, every aspect, every word, every command, you got to keep it all." "Okay. Well, anything else we should do?" "Well, if you were to sprinkle on a little self-righteousness, human merit, yeah, that wouldn't hurt anything. In fact, that would go a long ways. That would be a great bonus." "Okay. So I do those things, and then I can call myself a child of Abraham." "Oh yeah, you do those things. You do all those things, you're now a full-fledged child of Abraham, and you can sing the song, and you can do the dance."

One of the astounding truths of the Bible is that we who are Gentiles, unrelated to Abraham physically, can become spiritual offspring of Abraham by virtue of our faith in Christ, and thereby experience all the blessings of God's promise of salvation. And the problem with the Judaizers is that they believed the best way to experience God's promise of salvation was not by becoming a spiritual offspring of Abraham, but by becoming as much of a physical offspring as possible through adherence to the Mosaic law. And so they failed to see that not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. It is not enough that you be physically related to Abraham to experience salvation. You must be spiritually related to Abraham through faith in Christ. And so how did Abraham find salvation then? Well, he heard the promises of god, he believed those promises, and by faith, he looked forward, he looked ahead to what the Messiah would do on his behalf in fulfilling those promises. How do we find salvation? Well, in precisely the same way. We hear the promises of God, and we believe those promises, and we by faith, we look back to what the Messiah already did for us in his death and in his resurrection from the dead in fulfilling those promises.

And so I have a question to ask of you this morning. Are you a child of Abraham? Are you an heir to the promise of God? Can you sing the song and can you do the dance? Galatians 3:29 says, "And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise." And the only way to access God's promise of salvation is through Christ. It is not something that can be merited or earned. It is graciously given in Christ. Paul's third argument this morning is an argument from chronology. An argument from chronology.

God's promise is prioritized. And so we get to verse 17 and Paul says, "This is what I mean. The law which came 430 years afterward does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void." The promise of God cannot be changed by the law of Moses because God's promise here is an eternal promise. And in fact, three times in Genesis 17, God says that this is an everlasting covenant, which means that nothing that comes after it can ever alter it. This promise, this covenant is set in place forever. And because this promise of God is eternal in nature, we should expect to find it reiterated throughout redemptive history, especially after the giving of the law. And this was the Judaizers' whole point. They said the giving of the law changed the basis of salvation from faith alone to faith plus works. But what if we have evidence in the scriptures that salvation is still through faith alone after the giving of the law?

And that's exactly what Paul did earlier in chapter 3 in verse 11. He quotes from the book of Habakkuk, which comes over 800 years after the giving of the law. And he doesn't quote Habakkuk because he's sad that the minor prophets are underappreciated, which they are. He doesn't quote Habakkuk because he's looking for a block quote to fill some space like a high school paper. He quotes Habakkuk purposefully. He quotes Habakkuk intentionally. He quotes Habakkuk chronologically. And so what does Habakkuk say? He says, "The righteous shall live by faith." This is the same message given to Abraham.

Habakkuk is saying the same thing about salvation as Abraham. Habakkuk is saved in the same way as Abraham, through faith apart from the works of the law. Now, if the Judaizers' claims were correct, we would expect Habakkuk to say, "The righteous shall live by the works of the law." But it's not what it says. He doesn't say that at all. Instead, there is a continuity all throughout the scriptures, and there's a priority given to the simple truth that salvation is through faith alone. Now, in your own personal life, do you tend to prioritize the promise like God does in the scriptures or are you tempted to prioritize the law? Now, we live in a world of morals and rules and ethics. From a young age, we essentially learn how to be good little moralists. We learn all about what is acceptable in polite society.

At least most of us do. We learn about social etiquette. We understand right from wrong. We live according to moral instruction and clear rules. We are rule keepers from youth, and some of us are quite good at it. We like rules. We like keeping them. But the danger that we have in a moral society is reducing the message of the gospel down to moralism, behavior improvement, behavior modification, and there is a false sense of security that some find in moralism because they believe that they can control the approval of others through their own acceptable behavior. And this is how many live their whole lives. They think that they can do this even with God.

And the reason why so many flock to the law is because they think it is the easiest path forward. They think, "I can keep rules. I've been doing it my whole life." The problem, though, is that there is no life to be found in the law. Rule keeping cannot bring you life. It can only pronounce you condemned. And so what does it mean then to prioritize the promise? Well, it means that you declare spiritual bankruptcy. You take spiritual inventory, you evaluate your life, and you determine that there is nothing of value or worth in your life that would impress God, and you have nothing to offer GodAnd this realization of your unworthiness before God is meant to drive you in desperation to the cross of Christ, because only there is true hope found. Only at the cross of Christ are there blessings upon blessings available to the sinner who finds eternal refuge in Christ.

Not the labors of my hands can fulfill Thy law's demands. Could my zeal no respite know, could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and Thou alone. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.^[4] Are you prioritizing the promise of God this morning? Four arguments showing that the law did not change God's promise. Paul's last argument, number four, an argument from logic. God's promise is exclusive. God's promise is exclusive. And so we have this classic if/then statement that we have in verse 18, and Paul is making the point that God's promise is exclusive.

And so verse 18 says, "For if the inheritance comes by the law, then," it's an implied then, "it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise." And so there's this classic if P then Q logical structure here, and if you're smarter than me, you already knew that. I had to look it up this week. But for the sake of argument, Paul is assuming that the inheritance is received through the law. And he's saying, just for the sake of argument, let's just say that the inheritance is received through the law, and by inheritance, Paul is referring to salvation. And so for the sake of argument, Paul says, let's assume salvation comes by the law. Well, if that is true, then salvation no longer comes by the promise, and this is the whole issue. God said it would be received by a promise. God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Some translations more accurately would say God graciously gave it to Abraham by a promise, and that's really the whole point here.

Salvation is given by God's grace, and therefore cannot be earned and cannot be merited. And so the whole problem with the Judaizers' logic is that you cannot earn something that is freely given to you. You cannot earn an inheritance. It is given, and it is received as a gift. And salvation is freely and graciously given, which means that there is nothing that we can do to earn it or merit it or deserve it. And so what do we learn about God's promise here? Well, we learn that it is exclusively received through faith alone and Christ alone. Paul makes it clear that faith and works are mutually exclusive. They are not compatible. They do not work together.

In other words, we do not cooperate or work together with God to achieve our salvation. And there are plenty of bad analogies that are out there, I'm sure you've heard some, that would say things like, "God supplies the car and I supply the gas," or, "God throws you a rope and you climb up," or, "God does 99% and you do 1%." There is no collaboration in regards to your salvation. God isn't handing out high fives and commending you on your effort to fill the 1% gap. If you work to earn even 1% of your salvation, Paul says that God's grace is nullified. Romans 11:6 says, "For if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace." Any kind of collaborative effort to earn your salvation would nullify the very grace that is necessary to make it possible. Furthermore, Paul says in Galatians 2:21 that the mixing of faith and works undermines the work of Christ. Verse 21 says, "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose."

And so it's a serious danger to mix law and promise. By doing so, you are cutting yourself off from the promise of God. So where is salvation found? Where is the inheritance found? It is found exclusively in the promise of God through faith alone in Christ alone. And so this concludes Paul's arguments against the Judaizers, and in his arguments we've been shown the superiority of God's promise. We've been shown the riches of Christ's messianic fulfillment and the hope that every sinner can have in Christ. And so do you have that hope? Have you received God's promise by faith? So why give the law if the promise was so great?

And I am happy to inform you that answering that question will not be left up to me, but Pastor Rich will come back next week and answer that question in full. And so in the meantime, let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for this morning. We thank you for the riches of your grace. We thank you for the provision that you have given us in Christ Jesus, that, Lord, we do have hope because the fulfillment of your promise has arrived, Christ Jesus, and in him, we have all the riches and all the treasures and all the blessings of salvation given to us, and it's only by faith alone and Christ alone that we receive those promises. Father, encourage us this week. Continue to use the Book of Galatians to build up our body here. And so we pray all these things in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.

Referenced in this sermon

1. Martin Luther. View ↩
2. Great Is Thy Faithfulness by Thomas O. Chisholm (1923). View ↩
3. Father Abraham by Traditional. View ↩
4. Rock of Ages by Augustus Toplady (1763). View ↩