Only Faith Brings Freedom

Bible Reading — Galatians 3

Good morning.

I'm reading from Galatians chapter three the whole thing.

And it's long,

you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before your very eyes? Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.

I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law, or by believing in what you heard?

Are you so foolish after beginning by means of the spirit? Are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Have you experienced so much in vain? If it really was in vain.

So again I ask, Does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law? I by your believing what you heard.

So also Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Understand then, that those who have a faith are children of Abraham.

Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham. All nations will be blessed through you.

So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse as it is written. Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.

Clearly, no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because the righteousness will live by the righteous, will live by faith.

The law is not based on faith. On the contrary, it says the person who does these things will live by them.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written.

Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit.

Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established.

So it is in this case the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say and to seeds meaning many people, but and to your seed. Meaning one person who is Christ.

What I mean is this the law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God, and thus do away with the promise.

For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise. But God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

Why then was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions, until the seed to whom the promise had referred had come.

The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.

A mediator, however, implies more than one party, but God is one.

Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not. For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would surely, would certainly have come by the law.

But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin. So what was promised, being given through the faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe before the coming of this faith.

We were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.

So the law was our guiding until Christ came that we might be justified through faith.

Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

If there is neither June or Gentile, nor slave, nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are in. You are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.

This is the word of the Lord.

Unreal.

Thanks, Tony, and thanks, Liz.

Absolutely beautiful prayers.

Introduction

Well, good morning to you.

If I haven't met you before, my name is Megan and I'm the senior minister here.

This is the third, message that we're doing in the book of Galatians.

And if you're new or visiting special, welcome to you.

And you're welcome to go back and have a listen to some of the previous messages if you think that would help you at the end of today, because there's a lot going on.

and what we're finding in this passage is that Paul is responding to, a concern that he has that is not simply, about a little shift in the way that the church that he has established are believing, but it is an entire overthrow of the gospel, the good news about Jesus that he has brought to them.

So this is a passionate but it's a very kind of tightly argued and very Old Testament heavy, particular part of the book of Galatians.

So I hope that we're able to make that a bit clearer for us today.

given that we're not first century Jewish believers.

"I bet you 50 bucks" — The Stakes

Well, when I was growing up, my sister and I had a code or a symbol for when we were absolutely, 100% sure that we were right and the other was wrong.

And we would say, I bet you 50 bucks now.

It felt like a lot.

It felt like almost everything.

And to be honest, I still wouldn't mind, receiving 50 bucks if I was right.

It's not nothing.

and but it meant to us that what was on the line when we were assuring each other that the other was wrong and that we were right, was all that we had everything.

I bet you 50 bucks.

And it was usually about what happened on a TV show or, you know what? Who was to blame for something or other.

But I want you to hold that passion in your mind as we come to the start of Galatians three.

Because what is happening is you've got two groups who are claiming that what they are teaching this new church are believers in kind of the, the, the turkey area, is worth everything.

And, the person who is arguing against Paul A is, someone who stands for the Jewish religion.

So they are bringing to the Christians the teaching that you need to have everything that came with the law that was given at Mount Sinai.

this is that picture that you would have got in the book of Exodus.

Everything that came with the giving of the law of Moses is necessary to be a true believer.

Even if you believe in Jesus, you need to have all of this to come with it as well.

And it is everything.

So for them.

And Paul calls them the Judaizers, or this group that came from James, that is the kind of Central Jewish Jerusalem Christian Church and leadership to them, the the 50 bucks was all of this that if you don't have.

Adherence to the Mosaic Law and really national membership of Israel, particularly through circumcision.

Ah, then you miss out on this, the blessing of God's revelation of himself.

This is where the law, everything that God wanted people to know, was given the identity marker of God's people.

We are the people who carry the law, the means of right standing with God.

Do this and you will live.

And we'll talk about that in a bit.

being part of God's mission in the world, shining a light of this is the way to live, kind of carrying these practices that would bring the rest of the world to God and, of course, the way to live the good life.

This is there.

I bet you 50 bucks you will lose everything if you don't have this, if you do not have adherence to the Law of Moses as well as your faith in Jesus Christ.

But for Paul, this is going to make them lose everything.

The opposite is true.

You if you add the mosaic law, if you add what happened on Mount Sinai, the giving of the Ten Commandments and everything that came along with that, you will lose everything that you have.

And so he says, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before your very eyes.

Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.

This message that you have heard is the beginning and the end of God's provision for you.

It gives you everything, and if you add to it, you lose.

You lose this.

You lose the blessing of God's revelation of himself.

You lose the identity marker of God's people.

You lose the means of right standing with God.

You lose being part of God's mission in the world, and you lose the way to live the good life.

But Jesus Christ crucified.

And our faith in him gives us all of this and more.

The Galatians’ Experience

So let's read it again.

You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you before your very eyes.

Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.

I would like to learn just one thing from you.

Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

Are you so foolish?

After beginning by means of the spirit.

Are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Have you experienced so much in vain if it really was in vain?

So again I ask, does God give you His spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

The Galatians had already had an experience of God giving himself to them.

He had revealed himself as they heard the gospel and they experienced his power.

So here we see miracles.

We're also imagining in the way that Paul that it's described in the book of acts.

Maybe they had the experience of prophecy, tongues, healing words of knowledge.

This was an experience of God as well as, of course, and and ultimately that that knowledge that you are adopted into God's family.

And this came this experience of God came to them not through the addition of the Mosaic Law, not not through obedience to the law or circumcision, but because they had faith.

And when Paul talks about faith, or the hearing that comes of faith or the believing what you heard, he's talking about believing a promise.

So keep that in your mind.

The blessing of the spirit came through hearing and believing the promise about Jesus.

So this is the foundation of Paul's argument when we when they received God's agreement to adopt us into his family.

God gave his powerful presence to us in the gift of the spirit.

We hadn't completed any of the demands of the Jewish law.

We received God's favor and fellowship, his embrace of us and his presence with us, his gift of His Spirit by trusting in the declared promise of God.

You see, the gospel, the good news about Jesus is actually a promise because it says this one Jesus Christ who died and was raised.

He is all you need to be set right with God.

He pays for your sins and he opens the way to eternal life with God now and in the future.

But the thing is, you and I don't see.

We didn't see him crucified.

We didn't see him raised.

We don't see the kind of mechanism of our sins being taken away.

We don't see the gate of heaven being opened for us.

This is a promise that these things are true, that these things have been done for us because of Jesus.

And so faith is actually believing that promise.

God has said, If Jesus has died for you, then you are forgiven, I promise you.

And I say, I believe you.

If Jesus has died for me, I am forgiven.

I believe your promise.

So we receive God's favor and fellowship by trusting in the declared promise of God that everything we need for favor and fellowship is found in the crucified and risen Messiah, Jesus Christ.

We trust in that promise, and God gives us a right standing with him, and he gives us his very self in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And the Galatians had had that moment.

They had heard the message about Jesus, and they had believed God's promise to them, that if they received Jesus as the Messiah and trusted in his work, they would be right, and they experienced the gift of the Holy Spirit.

None of that had anything to do with their adherence to the Law of Moses.

Abraham — The Man of Faith

Now this is where Paul starts to move from their present experience back to the past in not simply the giving of the law at Sinai, but even earlier to Abraham.

So he says, so also Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Understand then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham.

Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham.

All nations will be blessed through you.

So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Now, Paul could have had a little italics and underlined there.

The man of faith.

You see, the law giving at Sinai was one thing, but it was not at the very beginning of the creation of the people of God, who was there at the beginning of the creation of people of God.

Well, it was the man of faith, Abraham.

So God creates humankind, and they have the favor and fellowship that he longs to have with them.

But because of their turning away their sin, their rejection of God's way, then that favor and fellowship is broken.

And so if you're reading Genesis 1 to 11, that's what you see.

And it spirals and it snowballs and all those other words, meaning it gets completely out of control.

And so in Genesis chapter 12, God calls a man Abraham.

Out of this, not out of a faithful Jewish Moses law, a obeying group, but out of nowhere.

And Abraham becomes the founder of the faith.

He received God's favor and fellowship at that time through hearing and believing the promise of God.

So Abraham has these particular moments with God, and we're going to have a look at them over summer, actually.

So if you're looking at Genesis 12 1522, these are these really important moments where God gives a promise to Abraham and he says to Abraham, I'm going to fulfill it by my own power.

I'm going to make it happen.

There's nothing that you can do.

I will do it.

And so in chapter 12, we see that God says, go from here, I'm going to bless you.

you're going to get land and family, and the whole earth is going to be blessed because of you.

in chapter 15, God says, I'm going to make this an agreement, a covenant.

But Abraham just sits along and watches God do the whole covenant himself, taking on both sides.

So usually a contract.

A covenant is between two people, right?

And you both sign at the bottom and you say, I've got to keep this.

And if I don't keep it, these certain conditions will happen.

But in Genesis 15, only God signs this is going to have benefits for you, Abraham.

But I'm the only one who will be, undertaking the conditions of fulfilment or breaking.

And then in chapter 22, we see that God gives Abraham a son when he and his wife are old and it is his doing.

It is the beginning of the land and people and and blessing, and it is God's miraculous doing.

So.

Abraham, all the way back at the beginning, received God's agreement to create a group of people to be God's family on the earth land descendants, blessings.

But he hadn't completed any of the demands of the Jewish law.

He received God's favor and fellowship by trusting in the declared promise that God would give him everything he needed for this to be fulfilled.

Therefore, this is a pattern that is established right from the beginning.

This is the same as what you and I, what Christians are called to do to trust in the promise of God.

Sinai and the Curse of the Law

All right.

Well then he says, okay, if I've gone back to the beginning now let's go to that moment in Sinai.

All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.

As it is written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.

Clearly, no one who relies on the law is justified before God because the righteous will live by faith.

The law is not based on faith.

On the contrary, it says the person who does these things will live by them.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit.

So if Abraham is the man of faith, and he was set right with God through trusting in the promise.

What then was going on when Moses received the law?

Well, far from being a means of right standing with God, the law ultimately brought all people under God's judgment.

The revelation of God's law to Moses included two promises about the law.

It said the person who did all of it would be right with God.

They'd live, and the person who didn't keep it all would be under God's judgment and rejection.

That's what curse means in this passage.

But what Paul knows, and what everybody really should know, is that no one has ever kept the law fully.

Not even the best Jewish believer, the inclusion.

And Paul doesn't talk about it here, but he does elsewhere.

And it's in the book of Hebrews, the inclusion of the sacrificial part of the ceremonial law, the having to go and, and, and offer an animal and for there to be blood and, you know, all of this really weird stuff for death to come into the picture was actually a reminder constantly, even in that time.

That nobody was keeping the law perfectly.

There was already a measure to remind people.

That everybody fell short.

So even though there was a promise that if you do this, you will live embedded in the law.

This is in the book of Deuteronomy.

no one could access that first promise.

And everyone actually stood under the contract of the second that if you didn't keep it, you would be cursed.

You would be rejected by God that you'd be under his judgment.

But something has changed that affects how that works, says Paul.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

That symbolic language, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.

That's also part of that whole law rules.

If you see someone who's being hanged by the neck until dead, you know that they're being under God's punishment.

They've done the wrong thing in the community.

And so you see someone who is cursed and rejected.

That was from the Old Testament.

But when we see Jesus then hanging on across a pole, a tree not with a rope, but with nails.

We look at him and we say, then he must be cursed.

What? What is happening here?

Well, Paul says, yes, he is.

He is taking on that status for all of us.

He is becoming a curse.

He is taking the rejection.

The judgment he is.

I don't know if you've ever played with a magnet under a piece of paper with iron filings on it, and, you know, you move the magnet around and the little tiny iron filings kind of follow it.

And then they, they, they stand up and they're on the shape of that magnet.

Well, Jesus becoming a curse for us means that all our law breaking, all of our falling short, all of our being under judgment and deserving of God's rejection comes to him.

Every single part of our death is attached to him, and it is in the shape of the cross.

And if we want it to be gone, that's where it needs to stay.

Jesus redeems us by becoming a curse for us on the cross.

Redeems means setting us free, buying us back, giving us our adoption in the family.

That the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the spirit, favor and fellowship through trusting in God, who says, Jesus is the one who makes you right.

So Paul is actually saying that it is the cross that is the blessing of God's revelation of himself.

It's the identity marker of God's people.

It's the means of right standing with God.

It makes us part of God's mission in the world.

And he will say in chapters five and six, it's the way to live a good life.

Contracts and the Promise

Now he comes back to the idea of contracts and law court.

Now, brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life.

Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant or contract that's been duly established signed on the dotted line.

So it is in this case, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

Scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed.

Meaning one person who is Christ.

he's kind of playing with the idea of a collective noun here and saying, well, in our history we say Abraham's descendants kind of started with Isaac, one person, the child of promise.

But actually there was a better child of promise.

And if you are able to see that the promise to Abraham for descendants actually was fulfilled partially in one person, wait till you see who it's really fulfilled in one person.

Jesus.

But what I mean is this the law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God, signed on the dotted line, and only he had to do it, and thus do away with the promise.

For if the inheritance, the promise to Abraham that you're going to get all this stuff and you're going to be a blessing to the whole world, depended on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise.

But that contract was still in place.

God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

Why, then, was the law given at all?

It was added because of transgressions, until the seed, the child to whom the promise referred had come.

The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator.

This is the picture that they had from Mount Sinai when the Ten Commandments were given.

The mediator is Moses.

A mediator, however, implies more than one party.

But God is one.

That sounds really weird.

This is what it means.

The pattern of righteousness by trusting God's work is the foundation of all right standing with God.

It always has been.

That contract came first, so the law had not been given when Abraham was declared righteous by trusting God's promise and work.

We've got that this way of being made right with God chosen by God, came before anything else.

And when the promise to Abraham was set in place, it was done by a covenant made directly by God.

I've said that already.

But see, the difference was that when the law was given to the people from Mount Sinai, it wasn't direct.

It was communicated by angels, lots of angels around, lots of all kinds of, you know, big, scary, supernatural things.

The people were trembling.

It was given to Moses, and then it was given to the people.

So Paul is saying, look who signed the contract first and directly.

God.

The promise that you made right through believing his that he will provide.

After when the law came, well, that contract still stood and this one was mediated.

It wasn't even God signing on the dotted line directly to the people.

He's kind of playing with it a little bit here, but both in chronology and authority, directness, the pattern of being made right with God by trusting in his work takes precedence.

This is legal precedence based on the contract that was there first and that was signed directly.

The Law as Guardian; Children by Faith

Okay.

Is the law then opposed to the promises of God?

So that's what it sounds like you're saying, Paul.

Absolutely not.

For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law.

God doesn't do things that don't work.

If he intended it to bring life, it would have brought life.

But Scripture locked up everything under the control of sin.

Sin was there, but this kept the boundary, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe.

Before the coming of this faith, belief.

Trust in the promise.

Faith in Jesus.

We were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed.

So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified.

Set right.

Favor fellowship by faith, believing the promise that God would do it through Jesus.

Now that this faith has come, you're no longer under a guardian, your child.

You're free to be part of the family.

You have the favor and the fellowship of the family.

So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

If you were here last week, we talked about having the right clothes to wear at the wedding feast.

This is that picture.

There is neither June or Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female.

For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.

This is the summary.

If you've trusted God that Jesus does the work for you, that he is the Messiah, that he is the Lord, then you're actually part of this original contract.

You're in the fulfillment of that as it goes all the way through history, and you are now heirs according to that promise that you will have favor, fellowship, blessing, identity, right standing with God because of Christ.

If I can just get you guys to head back into the center for me.

The law was still part of God's plan, but it wasn't the plan to make us right with himself.

The law showed us our sin and pointed out our need of a Savior.

The law kept us ready for the revelation of the favor and fellowship with God.

That would only come through the promised seed of Abraham, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

He closed out the law by becoming a curse, and he fulfilled the promise by granting all who clothed themselves in him and his favor with in him with favor and fellowship with God.

And it doesn't matter your identity in Christ.

You have it all.

So who could have the identity marker of circumcision?

Well, a Jewish man and a free Jewish man.

So if you were a woman or a slave or a Gentile, you couldn't fulfill that part of the law anyway.

slaves, even if they wanted to go to the temple or, observe various parts of the law, what they could eat, what they could, what they could wear.

They had no freedom to do that.

but now.

But now in Jesus Christ.

Jew, Gentile, slave, free, male, female, all have full favor and fellowship with God through the cross.

The blessing of God's revelation of himself.

This is who I am.

This is what I do.

I will take it on myself because I love you.

The identity marker of God's people.

We are in Christ, the means of our right, standing with God, our sins forgiven, new life granted.

The spirit bestowed part of God's mission in the world to show forth his freedom and how to live the good life.

Application — Ten Ways We Live Under Law

Now, I doubt that many of us are tempted to obey the Mosaic Law today.

Is there actually any application to us?

Because no one is telling us that we need to eat certain ways.

Avoid this.

Don't wear a mixture of these fabrics, or get circumcised.

But I do think that we can still find ourselves living under law today.

And I want to just run us through ten ways.

Don't worry, they're very short.

• Firstly, our sense of guilt and expectation of rejection from God.

  If you live feeling like you're never measuring up, that you expect that God will punish you for something that bad things in your life are.

  Probably because you haven't been a good Christian.

  You're probably laboring under a theology of law.

• If you feel that you are driven to be perfect, that you can't possibly get anything wrong, including in like family career, how you how your health, how you look.

  Because you're a Christian, you're probably laboring under law.

• If you hide sin from yourself, from others, from God.

  If you feel that you can't possibly tell people or confess that you have messed up, that you struggle, that you're addicted.

  Because that would mean you're excluded from the love of God.

  You're laboring under law.

• If you're thrown into even church life in full busyness.

  And you know, I hate even seeing this one because I desperately want you to say yes to everything that we ask of you here at the church.

  No, actually, to feel that you have to be at everything and do everything in order to be right is laboring under law.

• When you look at the hierarchy of the church or people around you who are up on the stage and doing things or leading or whatever it is, and you think they must be way more holy than me, than you're probably laboring under law.

• If you've got rules for acceptance, who's a good Christian in this church, who you can play with, who you can spend time with, you might be laboring under law.

• If you're very reliant on yourself to make sure you get everything done.

  As a leader.

  As a parent, you might be laboring under law

• if you're ashamed or afraid of sharing the gospel because you know that people will look at you and think, you don't have all the answers and you haven't got it right and your life is a mess.

  You might be laboring under law

• if it's easier for you to share a gospel message that says, do this live right.

  Clean yourself up and you'll get all the good stuff.

  You might be laboring under law, and

• if you find yourself having conditions for who can be part of your fellowship and family, they need to look the right way.

  They need to speak the right way.

  Stop letting you down.

  You might be laboring under law

Freedom by Faith — What Changes

but instead it's only faith that brings freedom.

And not just faith.

Of course, it's a trust in the promise of God that he has given you everything in the cross.

• You get grace filled confidence.

• Rest in God's work.

• You get an opportunity to be honest and confess.

• You can have sustainable rhythms where you don't resent the church, but you serve out a joy when you can equal belonging.

• No matter who's up front, you've got freedom and yourself to fail.

• We could experiment with ministries, and even if we didn't get them right, it would be okay.

• Prayerful dependence instead of self reliance in all areas of life.

• You can be an authentic witness to the good news of grace.

• Rather than feeling.

• You need to have it all together before you can tell anyone anything good about Jesus.

• And you can give a radical welcome, because it is the cross that brings us favor and fellowship with God.

Amen.