Understanding Grace Pt 2

Good morning. Would you all stand? We want to welcome you to Calvary Chapel this morning. We also want to welcome those who are joining us online. We ask for your, Lord, we ask for your blessing on each of us today and that we would just draw close to you this morning as we worship in song, as we study your word. Father, be glorified, Lord. Give us a heart to worship

this morning and to study and to just grow in grace, Lord. Father, to fellowship with you and one another, just encourage us each in our walk and witness for you, Lord. We praise you. We thank you for your love, your grace, your mercy, your sovereignty, Lord. You're so good to us, Lord. You're in control. We can trust you in every area of our life. Oh, I just think of that acronym for

grace, God's riches at Christ's expense. We thank you, Lord. Your mercy and your grace, Lord. You may be seated. Your grace, getting what we don't deserve, that unmerited favor, Lord. Where else would we go if we sought to leave your love, people? You have the words of eternal life, Lord. We praise you.

Because your glory is so... Inheritance of our hearts to you and ask you to come in and forgive us of our sins and just make us those people you want us to be. And then you begin to work in our lives. You start a work. You set us aside. As Paul said, work out your own salvation. With fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and do of his good pleasure.

So we don't work to be saved, but in our being saved, we live and have our being with you, Lord Jesus. And we're living that out as we've been set apart, sanctified unto you. We've been saved and we're being saved in that consummation of going to finish our work. We lift our hearts to you. The hearts that we have, Lord, you know them. There's things that you're...

... Revealed to us that we don't like about our hearts. We think of you for your loving... Face. You're so good to us, Lord. We thank you. Breath of praise we can pour for you. That you would send your son to die. He was yielded to take the cup, Lord. Then ascend up there at the right hand of the Father and did just exactly what he said it would do. He would send the Holy

Spirit to convict or convince us of sin, righteousness, and judgment, Lord. We thank you, Lord. You are... In control. We can look to you. Praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Lord bless y'all.

Good morning. If you could begin the process of locating your seats. Even you, Glenn.

Grab yourself a bulletin. We'll get ready to go over some announcements.

As always on that left-hand side are the things that are going on throughout the week. So locate a spot to get plugged into from men's and women's studies to home fellowships, college and career. Youth group. Different things going on throughout the week. So find a spot to get plugged into. Over in the middle section of your bulletin. So the first thing it says is

Family Life Services Banquet. I have, as of right before the service, now all the tickets are claimed. So if you claimed a ticket, please talk to me afterwards. I have them here. I just need to get them distributed. But that's coming up. Please be praying that that goes well and just continue to pray for the work of Family Life Services. They really do an amazing ministry.

April 5th, which is the week of Holy Week. That Wednesday night, we'll be doing a worship night here. Really excited about that. Typical Wednesday night service, except instead of me getting up and teaching. It'll just be a night of worship. Just a time to really spend time at the feet of Jesus. And then April 3rd through the 7th, which is Holy Week. Ministerial Alliance always puts on

Holy Week services there every day from 12 to 1230. They used to do lunch, but every day they do lunch. So every day they do lunch. So every day they do lunch. So every day they do lunch. Ever since COVID, we stopped doing lunch. And really, honestly, it's probably better that way. But there's a little insert in your bulletin here that tells you where all of the Holy Week services

are going to be taking place that week. So you might just stick this in your Bible. If you have the chance to make it, it is always a real blessing to gather with brothers and sisters from throughout the community at a church that you don't typically attend, listening to a pastor that you don't usually listen to. It's a real place of continuity for the body of Christ that waits. So take note of that. I will probably put this in again next week because I know that many

times, as much as you memorize the bulletin, you forget what's going on in here. And then one last thing that I failed to put in there is that the mowing signup sheet is out there. So if you want to get involved in the mowing ministry, please sign up for that. It sure makes life a lot easier when we have more people doing it. So those are the things that are going on. If you would make

sure that your mobile device is silent. And for our response of reading this morning, we are going to be in Psalm 56. Psalm 56, as always looking at that new American standard. So we sound the same. If you need one, there should be one around you. And as you're turning to Psalm 56, if you would stand in the honor of the reading of God's word, I will read the odd verses. If you will follow along with Pastor Allen and the even

verses, Psalm 56 for the choir director, according to the reading of God's word. In God, whose word I praise, in God, I have put my trust. I shall not be afraid of you. I shall not be afraid. What can mere men do to me? All day long, they distort my words. All their thoughts are against me for evil. They attack, they lurk, they watch my steps as they have waited to take

my life. Because of wickedness, cast them forth. In anger, put down the peoples, O God. You have taken account of my wanderings. Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Then my enemies will turn back on the day when I will be in your book. I shall not be afraid of you. I shall not be afraid. This I know that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word

I praise. In God, I have put my trust. I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? Your vows are binding upon me, O God. I will render thank offerings to you. And read verse 13 with me. For you have delivered my soul from death, indeed my feet from stumbling, so that I may walk before God in the light of the living. And Father, we do praise you, Lord, that when we are afraid,

we can put our trust in you. And so, Lord, help us to be able to do that today. Help us to be able to call out to you and put our trust in you, to find our rest in you. And so, Lord, as we spend time in your word this morning, minister to us as you see fit by the power of your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. And if you would open up in your Bibles to the

book of Galatians chapter 3. Galatians chapter 3. As we look at verses 15 through 24 this morning, we come to the second part in our series, Understanding Grace, because Paul has been explaining grace to us. After he defended his message and his ministry, he now is explaining the message. And as he began to explain the message, just to bring us all back up to speed,

to get our minds back into the swing of things, let me remind you of a handful of things that he told Number one, he asked some questions. And really, all of the questions I feel like could be best summed up in the one question that he asked. And that is, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? In other words, having begun so well in a life of faith that was empowered by the Holy Spirit, that you access through faith, are you now through your own works becoming who God wants you to be? Are you now through your own works being perfected in Christ?

And of course, the answer is no, because our own works are like filthy rags. He then went on to explain that even Abraham, the father of the nation, was justified by faith because we're told in Scripture that Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness. He then went on to say, as a matter of fact, the gospel was preached through Abraham when he was told that through you, all the nations shall be blessed. And of course, we said that that blessing ultimately was none other than Jesus Christ himself.

And then he reminds us of the fact that the gospel was preached through Abraham when he was told that you who want to be justified by the law, that the law brings a curse because cursed is everyone who doesn't keep the entire law. And that's always the problem that we have. We may do good with nine tenths of the law, but none of us can keep it perfectly. Therefore, all of us lives under a curse. And we'll talk about that more today. And then of course, he finished off by saying, but

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. And how did he redeem us from the curse of the law? Simply by becoming a curse for us. After all, it says cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And so as he laid out that case of law versus faith, works versus faith, the law versus the promise, he now moves on to handle a couple of other subjects, primarily what the purpose of

the law is. And so there's two things that we'll look at in verses 15 through 24. We will look at the power of the promise. And the purpose of the law. And so we pick up in chapter three, verse 15, talking about the power of the promise. Notice what it says. Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations, 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. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. And so as he starts talking to us about

the power of the promise that God made, he reminds us in a very real world scenario of the binding contracts that we have with each other. That men, humanity, when we make contracts with each other, those contracts are binding. I remember the first time that I bought my house, I had to sign a contract. And I remember signing like 37 different pages. It might've been more, it might've been less. All of these different pages, and they're explaining

them to you as you sign, but I was young and stupid. I still don't know what all those pages mean. What am I saying? I'm still old and stupid. All of these pages that I'm having to sign. And I looked at her when all was said and done, and I said, so did I just sign my name 37 times saying that I would pay my bill? And she said, pretty much, yes. Because all of those pages that I

signed were a binding contract on me. I can't nullify it. I can't add to it. I can't take away from it because it was a contract. In order to change that, I would have to establish a brand new contract. So Paul says, even as men speak, contracts are binding. Promises are binding. Covenants are binding. And if that's true of humanity, how much more true is that of God? Because if we as humans in our sinful state

believe in the binding nature of a promise, believe in the binding nature of a covenant, believe in the binding nature of a contract, how much more does God believe in the binding nature of the promises that he made? He goes on in verse 16 to explain a little bit more of what he means when he says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say and to seeds as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed. That is Christ. Now he says, now the promises that were made to Abraham, what promises were

made to Abraham? Well, the promises that were made to Abraham were that he would make of him a great nation, that his descendants would be more than the stars that are in the sky, that he would bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him. And that through the seed of Abraham, there would be a blessing to all nations. Remember we said that in the last section, we said that that was the gospel preached in the old Testament, that through the seed of Abraham, there would be a blessing to everyone. And so if God is bound by his promises in the same

way that you and I are bound by our contracts and covenants, and God made these promises to Abraham, what does that mean about the promises that he made to Abraham? It means that God will always keep his promises, right? And what was the greatest promise that he made to Abraham? Well, when Abraham believed God, it says that God accounted it to him. As righteousness, you see the greatest promise that he made to Abraham was that there was a

righteousness that was available by faith. It says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham into his seed. He does not say to seeds as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed. That is Christ. Several different old Testament references. You might want to lock away in the back of your mind. You might lock away Genesis. I didn't have her put those

up there. Sorry. You might lock away Genesis chapter 12, verses one through three. That's when God first made the covenant promise to Abraham. You might lock away Genesis chapter 15. If you make a little note of that in the margin of your Bible, and then you might also lock away Genesis chapter 22. If I remember, remember correctly, it's verse 18, because that specific

promise Genesis 22, 18 is what's referred to here when he says, and through your seed singular, all of your seed, all of your seed, all of your seed, all of your seed, all of your seed, all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed. He says, many precious promises were made to Abraham and to his seed, not to seeds, plural, but to seed singular, because the great promise of the blessing to all of us through Abraham is not the nation of Israel. And that would have been somewhat mind boggling to any Jewish people reading this, but also a great deal of understanding to the Gentiles that were reading this because the legalistic Jews that had come into this Gentile church.

In the region of Galatia and said, listen, God promised that through the seeds of Abraham, through the nation of Israel, all the world would be blessed. Well, that blessing is in keeping the law. Paul says, listen, when he says into your seed, he doesn't mean plural, all of the nation of Israel in the law. He means seed singular, none other than Jesus Christ. Let me put it to

you in a really simple statement. Jesus, is the promise. Jesus is the promise. When he made that promise to Abraham that through you, all the nations of the world shall be blessed. He meant I'm going to send one. I'm going to send one who will be a savior to all who believe to all those who have believed up to the point in time of the coming of Christ and all those who will believe after the time of the coming of Christ,

because that was the promise that was made. Sin was the problem that we had. And he gets to that when we talk about the law. You know, I don't know that we always consider Jesus Christ, the promise. Follow me on this. You and I love to claim the promises, don't we? As a matter of fact, there's a lot of preachers that would tell them there's a lot of things you should be claiming

as far as the promises of God are concerned. And usually the promises that we like to hold on to the most are the promises that have to do with our life right here and right now, right? We all ultimately are Barbie. We want a great life, and our own apartment, right? We want all of the things of life right now. And those are the promises that usually we hold on to. So oftentimes we in our humanistic thinking,

when we think about the promises of God, we think God's always going to supply all of my needs. And he is. God's always going to give me everything that I need. He's always going to take care of me. And we think about everything based on this side of eternity. And we forget the fact that really the greatest promise that Jesus gave, that God gave to us was the promise of a coming,

a savior. Because the greatest problem that I have is not that I can't pay my bills. The greatest problem that I have is not a sickness that I may endure. The greatest problem that I have may not be the persecution of the people that are going on around me. The greatest problem that we have is not the government that currently is running the nation right now. The greatest

problem that we have is sin. That's what makes the promise of the savior so amazing. And so he says, ultimately, Jesus is the promise. And I love this, because you can tell Paul is trying to explain this the best way that he can, because he then goes on in verse 17 to say, what I'm saying is this, this is the point I'm trying to get to. The law, which came 430 years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God

so as to nullify the promise. This is what he means. In Genesis chapter 15, God declared Abraham righteous. And when God declared Abraham righteous, the right of circumcision wouldn't come for almost 20 years later, but the law itself wouldn't come for another 430 years. And yet Abraham was declared as righteous 430 years before the coming of the law. Therefore, the coming of the law does not

nullify the promise that God made to Abraham. It wasn't like God declared Abraham righteous, and then the law came and God's like, you know what, everything I've done up to this point in time, just throw all that off. Now, it's a brand new way to be righteous. And it's through the law. No, the law was never the way that we were supposed to be right with God. The law was never supposed to be the way that we were

to find our satisfaction in God. The law was never to be the way that we would find ourselves right in God's eyes. He'll explain in just a moment what the purpose of the law was, but it's not that because the law cannot nullify the promise of God, because God had already promised a son. God had already promised a blessing. God had already promised a savior.

And God had already promised righteousness through faith. Therefore, no list of works that God gave to them, the standard of righteousness that God gave to them would not nullify the promise of righteousness that God had bestowed upon Abraham. And brothers and sisters, whatever law you've made for yourself will not nullify the righteousness of God. It will always be through the promise because notice what he says. For if the inheritance is based on law,

it's no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. If, if righteousness is based on the law, then there's no promise. What is it at that point in time? It's my, it's my earnings. It's what God owes me, but it was never based upon law. It was never based upon my ability to perform. It was always based upon, upon a promise a promise that had been made by the grace of god and so as he lays out here for us

the power of the promise and just said listen the law can't nullify the righteousness that comes by faith in god you should ask yourself a natural question just like the jewish people would ask themselves a natural question and the galatian people would ask themselves a natural question well if righteousness doesn't come by the law the law can't nullify righteousness by faith then why the law what's the purpose of god giving us the law if the law can never make me righteous what is its purpose then why on earth did god ever give us the law and that's the question that paul now answers because the law still plays an important role in our life it just doesn't make

us righteous notice what it says pick it up in verse 19 why the law then it was added because of transgressions having been ordained through angels by the angels by the angels by the angels by the angels by the angels by the angels by the angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made now a mediator is not for one party only whereas god is only one is the law then contrary to the promises of god may it never be for if a law had been given which was able to impart life then righteousness would indeed have been based on the law but the scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in jesus christ might be given to those who believe but before faith came we were kept in

custody under the law being shut up to faith to the faith which was later to be revealed therefore the law has become our tutor leading us to christ so that we may be justified by faith but now that faith has come we are no longer under a tutor so what then is the purpose of the law what then is the purpose of the law why was the law given to us well paul is going to give us three things that the law does for us number one the law the law was added because of transgression the law was added because of transgression there's two main problems that you and i have as human beings the two main problems that you and i have as human beings are these number one we have blind spots in our own lives when it comes to sin

we have blind spots in our own lives when it comes to sin which is why we can identify it on everybody else in the world but we can't identify it on us let me give you a little bit of an illustration have you ever been camping you know what happens when you go camping you start to stink day one you notice your stink you're like that's rough that's campfire sweat mosquito repellent all mixed into one and you're like oh my god i'm going to go camping i'm going to go and nasty cocktail that's all over my body but by day two you know what starts to happen you go a little nose blind you don't notice the stench anymore after all you've been around your stench and everybody else's stench for the past 48 hours by day three you feel pretty good about you

right i don't stink matter of fact come on baby bring it in give me a hug because you don't even notice that you stink anymore why because you are so engulfed in the stink of who you are that you don't even notice that you stink anymore you've become nose blind to it but then something happens to you right you go back home and when you go back home and you smell how wonderful your house smells you go whoa what was that what is going on or or you go to a walmart on your way home because or a gas station or something and you walk in and everybody goes right like like you know when earl down at the gas station looks at you like you need a shower like you know things are serious right but that's the thing

we're so engulfed in our own sin sometimes that we can't see it we're blind to it we have blind spots to it because each of us has our own moral code and as long as we keep our own moral code we're going to be fine because we've based a moral code on a horizontal plane we're like everything's fine as long as i'm a little bit better than the people around me what the law does is the law takes away the horizontal plane and it creates a vertical plane and it creates a and pretty soon i stopped comparing myself to my own stench and i start comparing myself to the holiness of god because when god gave his law it was his righteous standard but you see there's a

second problem that we have as human beings we need a governor on our sin right we need something that restrains our sin the entire world believe it or not has some form of restraint upon their sin now those of you who are watching this right now you're going to see that there's a lot of those restraints are being pulled back more and more and more but the fact that there's any sort of moral code tells us that mankind has the law written upon their heart because they all know that there is a line that should not be crossed even if they're willing to cross it we need that governor on our sin it's the conscience for the human being but for those that have grown up in

the church for those who were living in ancient israel that governor upon their sin was the law it was added because of the law and it was the law that was being pulled back more and more and more of transgression not only to reveal sin but to restrain sin until the coming of jesus christ and you know that law still does its work in the life of people that's why when you bring up what the bible says the world says you can't judge me why because you have chosen to put a governor on their unrestrained sin and you have just pointed out the blind spot of the law and you have just pointed out the blind spot that they have in their life the law was added because of transgression and when that law was sent i want you to notice how the law was sent

having been verse 19 ordained through the agency of angels or ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made now a mediator is not for one party only whereas god is only one you see the initial mediator that brought the law to the people was who it was moses when he brought the ten commandments down to the people right but there continued to be a mediator throughout history the mediator that there continued to be throughout the history of the nation of israel was always either the high priest or one of the prophets that god chose who continued to relay to the people the law until the coming of the one to whom the promise had been made until the coming

of jesus that's why ever since the coming of jesus there's not been a high priesthood within the nation of israel ever since 80 70 there's not been a temple in the nation of israel there's been no way to sacrifice within the nation of israel why because the one to whom the promise had been made the promise himself has come the one who ultimately made would could make us righteous has come and so the law was added because of transgression the second thing that we take note of is this the law shut up all under sin notice what it says verse 21 is the law then contrary to the promises of god may it never be for if the law had been given which was able to impart life then righteousness would indeed have

been based on law but the scripture has shut up everyone under sin so that the promise by faith in jesus christ might be given to those who believe is the law then contrary to the promises of god is it opposed to the promises of god absolutely not the law is not opposed to the promises of god the law had one purpose and one purpose only to shut us all up under sin now i want to point out a couple things about the word that is translated shut up here huh the word actually means to confine or to imprison is the law contrary to the promises no because if a law could be given that could make us right then righteousness would be according to the law now what the law has done

is the law has imprisoned us all under the penalty of sin the law is much like a thermometer many of us have experienced sickness over the last couple of years and when you get sick what do you do you feel your forehead do you feel your head do you feel your head do you feel your head you go i'm a lot warmer than i should be for me i know if i'm all snuggled up underneath a blanket the middle of the summer i know hey i'm sick and so you grab a thermometer why do you grab that thermometer because what it's going to do is it's going to measure your temperature and if your temperature is really high that means you're you're sick now that thermometer cannot make you well despite every little kid in school's desire for it to make them well my wife always

talks about the fact that when she taught little kids in school they would say i don't feel very good and she knew if they were really sick or not because she would give them the thermometer put it under their arm and take their temperature and say you don't have any fever and they'd say i feel so much better why because she did something she gave them a thermometer right because they weren't really sick but she knew she took their temperature and said oh you've got a fever and they didn't say very much it was a real deal right the thermometer can't make you better all it can do is measure how sick you really are it can't give you a cure it just says yep you're sick it confirms what you

know and that's what the law does for all of us it confines us it imprisons us all under the penalty of sin because as the law begins to lay out its righteous requirement which is exactly what jesus did in in matthew chapter five through seven when he gave us a sermon on the mount he confined us he imprisoned us he shut us up all under sin so as we stood before god we said what can i do what can i do because the you look at that righteous standard of god the more you realize how unrighteous you really are when we think about the fact that the law says you're to have no other gods before me and yet how many of us have idols in our lives when the law says you should not use the name of the lord

your god in vain we think about how many times we claim the name of jesus and then don't live according to that lifestyle or god forbid sometimes we take the name of jesus and we turn it into a word intended to curse or to curse other people when we think about the fact that the law says you shall not commit adultery and yet jesus said to even look with lust in your heart upon another you've already committed adultery when we see that the law says you shall not murder and then jesus takes it that next step and tells us that if you've even had anger in your heart towards another the heart of murder was already within you when we think about the fact that the law says you shall not tell a lie you shall not bear false

witness to your neighbor and we think about how many times we have been deceptive or dishonest and the things that we've done even little things that we become dishonest and all of a sudden we start going oh man we're all we're all confined under sin and when we think about the fact that the law says you shall not steal anything how many of us have been guilty of theft and the one that really knocks us all down and i was just reading a short little article by alistair beg on this yesterday he called it the sin no one admits to the sin of covetousness what a deadly sin that dominates our culture what a deadly sin that dominates social media what a deadly sin that dominates our world today that sin of covetousness that sin that

encapsulates all of us the sin that caused us all to say oh wretched man that i am who will set me free from this body of death you see when we really know what the law says we find that the law imprisons all of us i'm reminded of that scene that scene where they brought the woman caught in adultery to jesus which they absolutely should have done if she was caught in adultery the law spoke to that the law spoke to how that should be dealt with the problem wasn't that they brought the woman caught in adultery to jesus the problem was that they were all guilty of the exact same sins so this woman that's caught in adultery is brought to jesus right and as they bring her to jesus they're simply hoping to

to trip jesus up and and they say master this woman was caught in adultery in the very act of adultery which should immediately bring a question how'd you know were you involved i wonder if that's what jesus wrote in the dirt i'm getting ahead of myself and so they say now the law says she should be stoned what do you think we should do and jesus said he who is without sin let him cast the first stone and then he bent down and he started to write something in the dirt and you know what he wrote in the dirt me neither it doesn't say he starts writing in the dirt you know what i think he wrote in the dirt though i think he started writing out all the sins all the ways that they had broken the law

maybe some of them were adultery maybe some of them were covetousness maybe some of them were murderous thoughts maybe some of them are the lies that they told maybe some of them are the idols that they held in their lives whatever it was he starts writing in the dirt and it had to have convicted their hearts because one by one they started to walk away from oldest to youngest why because the law confines all under sin sin but one thing i appreciate about the new american standard translation is this one it says the law shut up all under sin because you know what the law does for us it makes us shut up how many of us justify ourselves i'm a pretty good person i've never done this i'm a pretty good person because i'm not as bad as they

are i'm a pretty good person because i've always done pretty good in this and we justify ourselves and we justify ourselves and we justify ourselves i got to tell you as a dad and as a teacher of of young people nothing drives me nuts more than when you're trying to confront a person in their sin and they will not shut up they just they just keep being like yeah but you don't understand but but but he said but this and no i didn't mean to and and all these kinds of things and find listen sometimes i use the sh word okay some sometimes i look at my child and i say shut up i need you to stop talking now and and i don't know if i've ever said that to i definitely have said that to a student i remember the instance i'm not gonna tell you

about it but i remember the instance where i had to say shut up because i can't take it anymore and that's what we all do as human beings the law begins to convict us and we start giving all of our excuses until the law finally does its good work in our lives and goes gotcha and we go and the law shuts us all up and pretty soon we go what now i'm guilty you're right what do i do now well notice what it says but the scripture has shut up everyone under sin why so that the promise by faith in jesus christ might be given to those who believe across the board it confines us all to the prison of sin it confines us all under the penalty of sin but listen it doesn't for a specific purpose so that we all can come to the same place of salvation

brothers and sisters the lord would not have us to live in the guilt of sins done in the past the lord would have us to live in the freedom of the faith that we have today we've talked about this several times throughout the book of galatians but i feel prompted to continue to share about it and that's that when the law reveals what we've done wrong we don't have to live in the guilt of that conviction we don't have to live in the guilt of that conviction we don't have to live under the guilt of that condemnation because it shows us where we've gone wrong so that we can then become right as the law shuts our mouths and causes us to simply go i'm guilty jesus comes in to say but i've made a way for you you see all the law can do is do

what that thermometer does right all the law can do is take our temperature and go yep you're pretty sick jesus comes in and he gives us the cure jesus comes in and he takes care of all of us and we're all of the problems because he solved it all on the cross all of us have been confined to under sin so that all of us can be given the same salvation and can i just once again talk about the universal nature of both of those things it doesn't matter who you are hearing this message this morning it doesn't matter what your background is it doesn't matter what the color of your skin is it doesn't matter what gender you are it doesn't even matter if you don't know what gender you are we're all caught up under the same

problem and the same problem that we all have the singular and it's sin and it puts us all under the same guilty place of sin no matter what your sin is because some people's sin is a little more decayed than others but any way you look at it we've all been confined under sin and the reason why we've all been confined under sin is so that we can all be saved in the exact same way through our faith and the finished work of jesus christ on the cross because in the same way no matter who you are no matter what your background is no matter what the color of your skin is no matter what your gender is even if you don't know what your gender is it's time for you to come to jesus because you have to get saved the exact same way now here's

the beautiful thing about jesus he doesn't leave us the way that we were he turns us into who he wants us to be in the same way that he saved us he will continue to save us he doesn't leave us in that place but he meets us in that place and as he meets us in that place he draws us to himself and makes us brand new in him all of us are confined under the same sin so that all of us can be saved by the same faith and that leads us to understand something and he'll go on to say it later on in this chapter but we won't make it there today but i'll make the point right now there's now really only two groups of people in the world you're either saved or you're under the condemnation of sin and the more that we as the church can view people like that

the less we will have issues of racial barriers the less we will have issues of gender barriers the less we will have issues of nationalistic barriers because all of the middle wall of separation is broken down in christ because you are either saved or you're under the condemnation either in christ or you are out of christ if you're in christ we want to build you up in your faith if you're not saved we want to see you come to know jesus no matter who you are no matter what your background is no matter what you look like so he says why the law well first of all was added because of transgression second of all it confined us all under sin but then third the law was our tutor notice what it says

verse 23 but before faith came we were kept in custody under the law being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to christ so that we may be justified by faith but now that faith has come we are no longer under a tutor now it feels really similar to what he just said because he just told us that we were all shut up under sin confined us to the law but now that faith has come we are no longer under a tutor now imprisoned under sin and then in verse 23 he says we were kept in custody under the law those are actually two very different terms that mean two very different things the first one means to imprison the second one speaks of protective custody the first one speaks of being guilty

before god the second one speaks of being preserved what did the law do for us well the law was our tutor first of all it kept us under protective custody i'm reminded of this so much of kids that grow up in the church because when i think about the israelites living under the law until the coming of jesus i think of kids that grow up in a church right when when kids are growing up in a church they may or may not have some form of understanding of faith but we always put restrictions on them we put limitations on them and those are really good limitations those are really good restrictions we make rules for them about the way that they live their life about the

way that they grow up about the things that they watch the things that they read the things that they listen to why because they're not going to be able to live the way that they want to live they are kept under that protective custody if you will we keep them under the law until they come to a place of understanding and it's the most beautiful thing in the world when you see a young person come to a full understanding of faith let me put it to you like this i worked with youth for a really long time and i still do to an extent and i tell them all the same thing i tell my daughters the exact same thing now you want your parents to trust you you have the strongest relationship with jesus christ that you can possibly have

because until you come to that place you're always going to live under law you're always going to live under the law of your parents but once you come to the place of understanding your relationship with jesus christ and they realize that now there's a higher level of accountability in your life that you no longer see yourself just as accountable to your parents you also see yourselves as accountable to god then all of a sudden you will have all of the freedoms in the world because they know that you will not do anything to violate the god that you serve and they will give you freedom and my kids are like really like just test it out and then i told them about the story of my own life

when i wasn't walking with jesus i was doing stupid things in my life and my parents had to put laws and restrictions on me but at the end of my junior year in high school i got crazy turned on for the things of god i really understood what it meant to walk with jesus christ and all of a sudden now i'm living according to a higher accountability to the point where when i was a senior in high school my dad got a job in kansas city and halfway through my senior year of high school i had to move up there but i was already wrestling and they didn't want to pull me out of school in order to take me up there because they wanted me to be able to finish out my senior year

with my friends and so they let an 18 year old kid and a 20 year old kid live in a house together for six months all of my friends were like dude if that was my house that would be the party house every single night of the week and i and i would look at him and say but it's not and my parents trust me you're not coming over because they knew they knew i had a higher level of accountability at that point in time therefore i had freedom that's the idea that's being given here up until the coming of jesus up until your understanding of faith you're kept under the protective custody of the law what does he mean by that he says verse 20 sorry i just lost my place here uh verse 24 therefore the law has

become our tutor to lead us to christ so that we may be justified by the law faith uh some of your translations may say school master but i want to tell you that both of those are poor translations of what this actually means the word that's used there is actually pedagogue not pedagogue that would be the subject a pedagogue was the one who kept track of the subject you see in ancient greek and roman times wealthy families when they had a son they would hire a man that man's job was the training in the raising of that son he made sure that they were healthy he made sure that they were happy he made sure that they lived morally and he taught them as much as he could up until the age of 16 that tutor that pedagogue

his one job was the raising of that child until that child reached an age of accountability at which point in time that child was set free to go to another teacher that would train him in whatever profession he was going to go into that's the idea behind that word tutor it's not just a school master meaning like it teaches us things no it has an even deeper meaning than that because you see the law was our pedagogue it was the one that kept track of us until we were ready to be handed over to a higher level of accountability that's what the law does for us that's what the law was intended to do for the nation of israel it was intended to keep them under that protective custody to keep them in the same way that a

tutor would keep a young roman or greek citizen until they reached an age of accountability reaching that age of accountability was the point in time when jesus came because notice what it says therefore the law has become our tutor but what was its point to lead us to christ that our justification might be by faith that's what the purpose of the law is in the lives of human beings but notice that what it says but now that faith has come we are no longer under a tutor now that faith has come we don't need that anymore when you're living an active obedient life to jesus christ when you are walking by faith this life that i now live i live by faith in the son of god who loved me and gave himself for me when i'm living that life of

faith i no longer need a tutor but i want to tell you there is still a relationship to the law even though it's 2 000 years later there's still a relationship to the law that we see in the lives of people today first of all there's the relationship that the law has for the unbeliever and i believe that one of the greatest things we can do in sharing our faith is to use the law as a matter of fact you should look up some teachings by a guy named named ray comfort uh ray comfort wrote a book called hell's best kept secret and the idea behind it is that if you're a believer in the law you're going to be a believer in the book hell's best kept secret is that we have sold cheap grace for way too long we've sold grace

without law because you see the bible says this law to the proud grace to the humble until your mouth has been shut you need the law you need the law to do its good work in your life because that's eventually what it does to us is it finally shuts our mouth and so for the unbeliever they need to hear the law in their life and what they need to hear is that god has a righteous standard and god demands a righteous standard and if you can't meet that righteous standard then the only choice for you is hell because that's the problem that we all have we all have this one problem of sin we're making life too complicated in our world right now amen we have over complicated everything in our world right now and we have made everything much more

difficult than it needs to be we've psychologized everything we've overthought everything we've tried to come up with ideas about everything and really there's one problem that we have and the one problem that we have is sin and if we can solve that problem a whole lot of other things are going to be taken care of you want to cure the gender identity problem tell people that their identity is in christ not their gender you want to solve the homosexuality problem tell people that god made one man and one woman and anything else beyond that is sin you want to solve the murder problem that we have in our nation you tell them that the problem that they have in their heart is anger and murder and the only way to solve that problem is to

deal with that is the blood of jesus christ you want to solve the financial problem in our nation you tell people to quit living covetous lives and they can do that through the power of the holy spirit i guarantee if we solved the sin of covetousness in our culture our economy would flourish because that's the problem that we have is that we covet what everybody else has therefore we spend way too much money if we don't have the money to spend to get it what do we do we borrow sometimes from the bank of china right sin is the one problem that we have in our culture but if you take people to the law and you show them what the law has to say and let them know

that one day you're going to have to stand before god based on this i don't believe in god well you don't have to believe in traffic but it's still real one day you'll have to stand before god and you'll have to answer this let's just say god is real what would you do if you had to stand before god i will guarantee the same answer will come out every time i don't know and once they get to that point their mouths have been shut they've stopped justifying themselves you can say let me tell you about jesus because he died for all of those sins that you just owned up to he died to set you free from all of them and now the law has just been used in a lawful way to shut the mouths of sin and to set you free from all of them

bring them to an understanding of their need for faith and a savior but do you know that that same law still has its role in the life of the believer i never thought about this until i was listening to bob hoekstra teach on it i found this to be groundbreaking in my life he said when you're living a life according to faith obeying god through faith you have no need for the law because you're living an active obedient relationship with jesus and you're living an active you don't need the law because you've held yourself to a higher accountability but the moment that you begin to walk in sin you've stepped out of a life of faith and you've stepped back into a life of sin you've stepped back into a life of pride and now the law needs to be used

in your life again because what happens to all of us as believers in jesus christ well sometimes we slip into sin and what do we do when we slip into sin we we justify that sin and we start saying it's okay it's just a weakness that i have it's okay it's not really that big of a deal listen i'm not even sure if that's what god meant in the word when he said it's it's okay i still have control over this thing and then god is so gracious to put us back under the law because the law is for the laws for the proud and grace is for the humble so as believers in jesus christ he still uses this law in our lives does he not not as a way to be righteous but as a way to reveal where we have

stepped off the path of faith and in comes god's law again and he says this is where you're messing up and we say oh lord i'm so sorry because he convicts us through that word have you ever noticed that all of the things of the old testament all of the nine of the ten commandments are confirmed for us in the new testament the only one that's not confirmed for us is the law about the sabbath day the law about the tabernacle the law about the holy book and the law about the holy book and the holy book and the law about the holy book and the holy book and the holy book and the because that was fulfilled in jesus we still keep the sabbath day by resting in christ other than

that all the other nine commandments are confirmed for us in the new testament why because we still need to be told what's right and what's wrong sometimes because when we step off the path we need to be brought back onto the path but you know what when god's righteous law reveals to a believer that you're in sin what do we do but we still come back to jesus we're told in the book of first john that the blood of jesus if we walk in the light as he is in the light then the blood of jesus christ continually cleanses us from all sin where are you this morning have you stepped off the path have you stepped off that path and you need that law to bring you back into line or are you living in that life of faith that god calls for you to live

walking obediently in the things of him resting in the finished work of jesus christ on the cross are you in christ or are you not in christ i'm always here to tell you if you're living that life you shouldn't be living it only takes one step one step back into line one step back to jesus because listen the promises of god never fail amen let's all stand would you bow with me lord we come to you now and father we thank you for the time that we've had in your word lord i thank you for what your word does for us lord that it it brings us to a point of realizing that we need you but then reveals you so clearly reveals you in such a way that we know that you are one place of hope and so

father continue to reveal to us continue to reveal to us who you want us to be and continue to fashion in us the heart you want us to have we thank you and we praise you lord in jesus name amen be blessed love has no bounds your grace is sufficient for us lord we thank you for your love your mercy your sovereignty lord go before now and encourage us strengthen this build us up in your faith reprove us instruct us all those things your word does for us as we study it jesus name amen lord bless y'all have a great week