A Permanent Promise
Galatians 3:15-22
INTRODUCTION: I am reading a biography on the life of C.S. Lewis by Terry Glaspey called, “Not a Tame Lion.” In it Glaspey tells about how during World War I Lewis made a promise to a friend of his named Paddy Moore that if Moore was killed, Lewis would look after his mother and sister after the war. As the war dragged on, the man was killed. True to his word, Lewis took care of his friend’s family. Yet no matter how helpful he tried to be, the woman was ungrateful, rude, arrogant, and domineering. Through it all, Lewis kept forgiving her. He refused to let her actions become an excuse to renege on his promise. –
I glad to say this morning to you God always keeps his promises, always. No matter how ungrateful, rude, arrogant, and domineering we may be God graciously, lovingly, and wisely keeps his promise.
In the Scripture, God’s promises are made in the form of covenants. In my opinion, an understanding of the nature of the nature of biblical covenants is essential to correctly understanding the Word of God.
FIRST, the law can not hinder the covenant of grace
because The Abrahamic Covenant precedes the Mosaic Covenant
(Verses 15 & 17)
·
Paul has shown that salvation was always through
faith and not by works going back to Abraham… Galatians 3:6-7 Even so Abraham believed God, and it was
reckoned to him as righteousness. [7] Therefore, be sure that it is those who
are of faith who are sons of Abraham. [
· There has always been one way of salvation, through faith in the work of Christ, through grace alone.
· Even if Paul’s opponents admitted that Abraham was justified by faith, those Judaizers might have argued that the Law, coming at a later time, entirely changed the basis for achieving salvation.
· This is exactly what Dispensationalism has taught…the original Scolfield reference Bible suggested that people in the Old Testament were saved by keeping the law.
· Paul’s point is that once a covenant was made, it was never reneged on…
·
The Gibeonites in Joshua 9 fool
· Paul’s point is that a covenant, once ratified, cannot be modified or set aside by a later covenant. Since the Abrahamic Covenant preceded the Mosaic Covenant, it has priority over it.
APPLICATION: See how we should view our covenant obligations. We bind ourselves; we limit our choices by making promises, making vows, entering into covenant agreements.
Marriage
Church
God promised Abraham that he was received by faith…God bound himself to us by his covenant…salvation is given through grace not by law keeping.
Many Christians, Families, Churches, Organizations make law keeping the test of whether you are saved or not…”IF YOU WERE A REAL CHRISTIAN YOU WOULD DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE TOLD TO DO BY ME! WRONG! This is legalism, and exactly what Paul says is not correct. WE ARE SAVED THOURGH FAITH IN THE PROMISES OF GOD, NOT BY LAW KEEPING.
FIRST, the law
can not hinder the covenant of grace because The Abrahamic
Covenant precedes the Mosaic Covenant (Verses 15 & 17)
SECONDLY, the
law can not hinder the covenant of grace because the fulfillment of the
covenant promise is through Christ (Verses 16 & 18).
·
Paul makes a distinction between “seeds” and
“seed” in verse 16. The point is the
fulfillment of the blessings God promised through Abraham and his seed
(singular) are dependent upon one person, not the entire nation of
· That one person, in which all the promises of God for salvation come together was none other than Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
·
Genesis
·
Jesus was and is the true seed of Abraham - Matthew 1:1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,
the son of David, the son of Abraham.
·
A. W.
Pink - The promises of God were never made to all
the descendants of Abraham, like so many different kinds of seed, but were
limited to the spiritual line, that is to ‘Christ.’ Mystical. Hence the unbelieving descendants of Jacob
were as much excluded from those promises as were the posterity of Ishmael and
Esau. Contrariwise, believing Gentiles,
one with Christ in the everlasting covenant, were as truly embraced by them, as
were Isaac and Jacob and all the godly Israelites (Pink, p. 120).”
APPLICATION: Salvation is only through a relationship to Jesus Christ. This was always God’s purpose from Old to New Testament. In Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises of Abraham. We should look for no other way…no law keeping can equal this…
FIRST, the law can not hinder the covenant of grace
because The Abrahamic Covenant precedes the Mosaic Covenant
(Verses 15 & 17)
SECONDLY, the
law can not hinder the covenant of grace because the fulfillment of the
covenant promise is through Christ (Verses 16 & 18).
THIS IS WHAT REFORMED THEOLOGY HINGES ON – THE
SOMEONE HAS WELL SAID…
Why did Abraham strive by his own efforts to produce a son through whom he would be blessed, rather than to trust God? Was it because he did not find God trustworthy? Why do we take matters into our own hands, even when we have God’s promise to the contrary and a prohibition to boot? Is it because we would rather trust in ourselves than in God? This is why legalism is so lethal. At its very core legalism is based upon a distrust of God’s promises; they are exchanged for confidence in our own performance. If we seek to gain God’s favor by our works, we place ourselves under the Law—all of it. In so doing we find ourselves under its curse. The cure for the curse of the Law is the cross of Christ, accepted and believed in by faith alone