Paradigm Shift // Why Did God Give the Law? // Guest Speaker Pastor Cody

Well, how many of you husbands, your wives, have looked at you and said you foolish husband, right, all right.

He's like basically scolding them, he's reprimanding them.

He's like I told you guys this already.

Why are you still struggling with this?

But then in the rest of this we're going to pick up.

In verse 10, through the end of the chapter, he goes on from scolding them, he reminds them of the gospel, the death, burial, resurrection, justification through Jesus, and then he does some teaching about the Old Testament law.

And then he goes into an application.

He tells them what they need to do about it.

That's where we're going to start.

But before we dive into all of that this morning, I have a question for you.

I need you guys help.

Don't be shy.

There's no right or wrong answer, okay.

So help me out with this.

I'm going to need you to raise your hand.

Raise your hand if you are naturally a rule follower.

Like you love rules, you love structure.

Just tell me what the rules are.

Tell me what the structure is.

There's no right or wrong answer here, all right.

So, okay, we're getting braver.

We'll keep them up for a second for you, all right.

Right, you love rules.

You want the structure.

Tell me what to do so I can do it.

I fall into this category.

That's me.

Thank you guys.

Put your hands down like I just want to know what the rules are so I can do the right thing.

Right, how many of you?

You are a little more like when someone tells you the rules.

You're like, oh yeah, that's nice, you know, that's a nice suggestion.

Some of you have done OSHA training before.

You're like, oh yeah, that's good.

How many of you guys are more like that?

Like rules are made to be broken people.

You tend to question the rules.

Oh, you guys are a little more lively.

Okay, you question the rules a little bit.

Right, that's not me, I'm not like that.

Okay, but I want to go back.

First group again.

You love rules, you love structure, you're all about it.

That's you, that's you.

Hands up, please.

You're in that first group, thank you, thank you.

How many of you guys you say you love rules say you love structure?

This still applies to you, free-spirited ones too.

You love rules, you love structure.

How many of you have seen a sign that looks like this up on the screen have you ever seen that?

Some of you guys, I've seen you drive.

I know you don't look at that sign.

Okay, how many of you have seen that sign?

You rule followers that love the rule.

You rule followers that love the structure.

How many of you have ever gone faster than what that sign says?

That's what I thought.

But I thought I thought you love the rules.

Hey, you love the rules.

If the rules make sense to you, maybe right.

Why are we talking about rules this morning?

Because it's Mother's Day and mom loves rules?

No, I'm just kidding.

We're talking about rules because that's what Paul is going to talk about in Galatians.

He's going to go back into the Old Testament law.

We proved something just now, this morning, if you're honest, we proved.

None of us who are of driving age follows the laws in America perfectly, right?

Not this if you broke the speed limit, you're not a law-abiding citizen.

Oh, none of us can follow the laws in America perfectly.

Even more so, we can't follow the laws given by God, the nation of Israel dictated to them.

That's exactly what Paul is trying to explain to them this morning.

That's what we're going to look at.

He goes into this in Galatians, chapter 3, verse 10 through 14.

Galatians 3:10–14

It says this for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse Because it is written.

Everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.

Now it's clear that no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous will live by faith, but the law is not based on faith.

Instead, the one who does these things will live by them.

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

Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

The purpose was that the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles by Christ Jesus, so that we could receive the promised spirit through faith.

Okay, so he reminds them what they're doing.

There's these false teachers who are coming in preaching against the gospel, called Judaizers, and they're trying to teach them yeah, you need Jesus and you need to accept him by grace, but you also still have to follow the rules.

We still have to follow the Old Testament commandments that he's talking about, and Paul is writing to combat that false teaching.

Here's what he's saying.

He's saying, hey, if you guys want to try to live by all of these laws which, by the way, there are over 613 commandments given to the nation of Israel.

He says if you guys want to try, you can go ahead.

He says good luck, but that means you're going to live under a curse.

He says you can choose to live under the curse of doing everything on your own, trying to live up to the standard that you've kind of set for yourself, that you think Christians are supposed to meet.

Or you can choose to trust in the grace that God has bestowed upon you, that Jesus has given to you when he gave his life on the cross.

He says you can try to get to heaven and say God, look at all the good things I've done, look how well I've followed you.

But when you get there, god's going to say, hey, if you broke one of my laws, you broke all of them.

You need Jesus.

This is what Paul is trying to teach.

This is what he is trying to show to them that we have to trust the justification that Jesus offers.

And I think most of us the justification that Jesus offers, and I think most of us we intellectually understand that at this point.

We've been preaching through this series.

This is what Paul has been going over and over again about how it's our justification and faith in Jesus that saves us not in our good works.

I think if we were to search ourselves honestly, we can see how easy it is for that legalistic mindset, for that mindset of I have to earn something to creep back in.

Give you an example of this If you guys know my wife, kelsey, she owns her own business and what we do with this business is she's an artist and she goes and sells her artwork and we go to different shows like almost every weekend and what we do is, if you guys have ever been to like a convention or maybe like a craft fair or an artist fair, you see a bunch of vendors with their tables set up.

You guys ever seen something like that, right?

And people come and they give us their money and we take their money and it makes us happy.

Okay, no, I'm just kidding, but they come spend their money on us.

This is the business and we've been doing this for going on two years now.

It's been awesome, it's been growing.

But something that happens when we do this is that over time we go to a lot of the same events and you begin to meet the same people, the same vendors, who are also vending, right.

I love it because it allows us to build relationships with people outside of the church who don't know Jesus, who aren't Christians.

And we see a lot of the same sellers there and so after one event there was a couple who was about our age.

We've talked to them several times.

At that point we're like, hey, you want to go and just grab dinner?

Like, let's just hang out, let's just get to know each other.

I'm like, absolutely, let's go.

So we go and we get dinner.

You guys know, like I'm kind of an introvert, so like this part is awkward.

Oh, where are you from?

Oh, I'm from here.

Well, I was born here, but then I moved here and then I was raised over here.

Some of you guys have that type of background, right, you ask these different things, get to know each other.

And then the question comes what do you do for a living?

And I tell them I am one of the pastors at the best church in the world.

Okay, I just bragged on.

You guys said the best church in the world.

I was a pastor there.

I wasn't that weird, I was just like, yeah, I'm just a pastor at a church over there.

And they're like, oh, what type of church?

Oh, it's a Christian church and they didn't really have an understanding of Christianity.

They're like oh, I'm not familiar with Christianity, they're interested.

They're like what do you guys believe?

I've always been curious.

By the way, if anyone ever asks you, what do you believe as a Christian I know that can be intimidating You're like well, I believe a lot of things as a Christian, right?

Hey, the best thing is just say, give them the gospel presentation.

And that's what I did.

I said, hey, man, here's what I believe.

I believe that I've sinned, which means I've done some wrong stuff, some bad stuff.

And then I say, because of my sin, Bible tells me that I'm separated from God.

But the good news is that God sent his son, jesus, to die for me, to take on that penalty for me.

And I've accepted him as my savior and he rose again from the grave.

I trust him as my savior and that's how we believe we get to heaven.

That's why we follow him, that's why we serve him.

And they think about this.

I can tell they're processing this, thinking about it, and she goes.

She thinks she goes.

You're telling me this Jesus thing.

It's like not like a free pass, free pass, right?

Like a lot of religions, you got to work your way.

You got to do some stuff.

It's like a free pass, free ticket to heaven.

You just accept him as your savior.

Here's how easy it is for legalism to creep up in our hearts.

When she said that I didn't like that term free pass no, we got to follow Jesus, we got to follow his commandments, we got to follow his teachings and while we should and that's good and that's true all of those things have nothing to do with our salvation.

The way she described it was perfect.

It was.

It's a free pass for our sins.

When you accept him as your savior, he fully justifies you.

It has nothing to do with you and everything to do what he has done for you.

But we want to know the rules, we want to follow the rules, and I don't know if this is why for you, but this is the reason why I want to follow the rules for me, because when I know the rules, the rules put me in control.

Right, we want to know the rules because the rules put us in control.

Here's what I mean.

It means I can kind of have like this measuring guide of here's where my relationship with God is, because I've been reading my Bible every day I read not just one chapter, I read two chapters today.

So, like, my relationship with God is pretty good right now.

See, knowing the rules allows me to control where I am with God and my relationship with him.

What Paul is saying you have no control over that.

You are either fully justified by his grace, realizing that there's absolutely nothing you can do other than accept him and experience the love of being his child, or you can live under the curse and try to earn your way.

This is what Paul is trying to teach them.

This is what he's trying to teach us.

In other words, instead of trusting in my justification through Jesus, I try to trust in what I can do to get God to like me.

We can be tempted to go back and to live by the law for our justification, because it gives us a sense of earning something we feel like we have to earn it.

How can we just accept it?

Well, I want to go through here Number one today what happens if we try to live by the law?

Let's follow that out.

Let's play that out.

What happens if I try to live by the law, like Paul's talking about?

He says we're going to live under a curse.

He's talking about the curse of sin that we're going to live under.

What happens if I try to live by the law?

Well, the first thing that happens is it leads to pride.

When I'm doing really, really well, wow, man, I'm a good Christian, I'm doing super well.

I'm not like you know those guys they read the verse of their day in the Bible, not me.

I'm doing a whole devotional plan and I'm 30 days strong, right.

Then you miss a day, least of pride.

You miss a day.

Man.

I messed up.

I don't even want to pick it up now.

I already messed up.

I'm ashamed of myself.

God's mad at me.

He's angry at me.

When we live by the law, it's either going to lead us to pride look at what I've done going to lead to shame, and I can never do that.

I can never accomplish that.

Tell you how this played out in my personal life.

I grew up in a very religious upbringing, in a form of Christianity that was very, very religious, very, very strict, had a lot of rules.

I'll give you guys some of those rules, okay.

I was taught that if you ever went on vacation and you didn't go to church while you're on vacation, god was angry at you because you were forsaken going to church.

Okay, so if, like, someone found out, oh, you booked your flight on a Sunday I don't know, he's drifting We'll pray for you, brother.

Okay, right, it's that type of church.

He said we were never allowed to go to the movie theaters because movies were all bad, they were evil, couldn't go to the movies.

When you came to church, you had to wear like dress pants, dress shirt, otherwise you were disrespecting God's house.

If you had drums in your church, this was a huge deal.

No, drums in the church, right, drums are evil.

I don't know why, but drums are evil.

They had all of these extra rules, one of them that I rebel against.

They said no beards.

They said if you had a beard, you're a sinner.

And if they could see me today, come on.

No, there's like, if you have a beard, you are a sinner.

Because they said, like, christians are supposed to be clean and you're clean if you don't have a beard.

I guess I don't know.

They have a beard, I guess I don't know.

They had all of these different rules that we were supposed to follow and I bought into this.

Here's what that leads to.

It leads to extreme pride, so much so that this church that I grew up in in this neighborhood there were a ton of gospel preaching churches, bible-believing churches that preached the Word of God, that preached the gospel.

People were getting saved, people were getting baptized and discipled, and our church would get up and we would get up there and be like, see all those churches out there.

They're bad churches because they don't sing the songs we sing.

They don't dress up when they go to church like they're supposed to.

They would literally teach us all these churches they're just kind of fake Christians, fake followers of God.

The real Christians do things the way we do.

It led to so much pride that I actually used to go to one of those quote unquote bad churches and I had a group of friends in that youth group there actually shunned them.

I said man, you guys this was literally the reason.

I said you guys have drums in your church.

Like you're not real Christians, I can't hang out with you anymore because you're a bad example for me.

Here's what that is.

That is pride, thinking basically all saying, hey, I'm better than you.

When you get on my level, you can come to my church.

See what happens if we try to live by the law, we become prideful, thinking we've kept the law so well.

We want others to look at us like clap for us say we did a good job.

But on the other side of that coin, what happens when I get sick and I miss church?

What happens when I'm really busy and I forget to read my Bible that day?

Now it goes to shame.

Here's how that played out for me, how it led to shame for me, one of my first experiences with this type of church, with this type of Christianity.

I was already saved, but this girl invited me to a youth conference at this church.

You know, she's kind of cute, you know.

Youth conference, yeah, that's fine, you're going to be there.

Okay, I'll go.

Right, I'm going to go, I'm going to be there for you.

She's going to be there, I'm going to be there, right?

So we go, we go.

Now she warns me.

She says hey, just to let you know, this church is like a little more traditional.

They dress up a little bit, and I was like cool, I got you, no worries.

Now, if you guys know me, I grew up in Hawaii, so like dressing up.

For me, typical attire was like surf shorts, maybe slippers, usually barefoot.

And if I was going out to like a restaurant, you know, then I'd put on a t-shirt Other than that, like, legitimately, I would go to the grocery store, just surf shorts, that's it, barefoot.

No one cares, right?

So we go.

So I'm like I go home.

I'm in like eighth grade.

Okay, I gotta dress up.

So I go home.

I put on my nicest t-shirt, super nice t-shirt, not a collared shirt t-shirt.

It said Quicksilver on the front of it.

I was like I'm looking good.

I had a little silver chain put that on.

Oh yeah, I look good right now.

I had one pair of jeans that I owned because we had to go to a funeral on time.

So my parents bought me this pair of jeans.

So I had this one pair of jeans.

Put these black jeans on super baggy, they didn't fit me at all.

Right, I'm like man.

Look at me, I'm all dressed up.

Something in Hawaii, if you don't know the culture, you have like beach slippers that you wear to the beach and you got your like fancy nice slippers.

Okay, these nice slippers, they're like a little thicker.

It's not rubber sandal, it's like got a little cloth sandal on there.

Right, I put those on.

I'm like man.

I got my dress slippers on, I got my jeans on, I got my fancy t-shirt.

This was like me going all out.

And then I go to this conference.

I walk in the door and I get there.

I immediately noticed something.

Everyone there had collared shirts, button downs.

They had these weird ropes around their neck that were tied around their neck.

You know those ties that they're wearing, some of the super fancy ones.

They had slacks on and they had a nice little coat on.

Here's what I knew.

When I walked in, I was like I do not belong here, so I walk in, I'm with my youth group I'm.

When I walked in, I was like I do not belong here, so I walk in, I'm with my youth group.

I'm kind of like hiding in the middle of the pack, you know, trying to not be seen.

So we find our seats.

The preaching is about to start for this youth conference.

There's probably like 200, 300 kids there and I go and I'm definitely not sitting in the front row right.

So I find a seat like five rows back and I'm on like a corner seat over there and the preacher is preaching.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard preaching like hellfire, brimstone type of preaching, like the yelling type of pastors.

This pastor gets up there and he just starts screaming at us.

He's like oh you teenagers, you guys want to call yourself Christians.

You're listening to the world's music, you're not dressing right.

And he begins just like letting them have it.

Mind you, this is like a youth conference where all these teens came of their own free will to come and hear preaching.

He's like you guys aren't real Christians because you're not doing all these things, you're not living right for God.

And I was like whoa, I've never heard this type of preaching.

I've heard preaching.

I've never heard yelling like that, that before.

And then he does something, makes his way off stage.

He's still talking, he's still preaching, he's still yelling, he's walking, walking.

I notice he's getting kind of close to me, stops right in front of me, looks down at me.

He's preaching.

He says this is the exact type of kid I'm talking about.

You dare come into God's house with a t-shirt on, wearing your jeans and your slippers.

He had a cup of water in his hand.

Where is that cup of water on my head?

He says don't you ever walk into a church looking like this again?

Don't you ever disrespect God like that.

Two 300 teenagers there watching this.

I'm in shock, I don't know what to do.

I sit there and as he walks away he says I'm just telling you this because I love you, I'm just trying to help you.

Walks up, gets back on stage, he starts preaching again.

Shame, I felt in that moment.

All these people looking at me already didn't feel like I belonged.

This is what I did as an eighth grader.

I bought into it.

I went home.

I said Mom, dad, day two of the conference is coming.

I didn't tell them what happened because I felt like I was in trouble, like I didn't want them to know.

I just said, hey, like they dress up over there, can we go to the mall?

I got to get some nice clothes right.

So I go to the mall, I get my nice clothes on, I got the button down.

I come to church the next day and, like now, I started my Christianity off.

God, dressed right, looked right, looked the part.

Now, maybe you didn't have an experience like that in church.

Maybe no one poured a cup of water on your head, but you could be serving, living from a place of shame and not even know it.

Maybe for you, if you didn't get straight A's in your family, your parents were mad at you.

Maybe if you weren't MVP on the sports team, no one clapped for you, no one said good job.

Maybe in your workplace, in order to get noticed, in order to get a promotion, you got to make yourself look good, you got to talk yourself up, or else nobody is going to notice you.

You're serving from this place of.

I got to be better.

I got to do more.

I'm ashamed of who I am.

Therefore, I need to change myself so I can be better.

More I'm ashamed of who I am.

Therefore, I need to change myself so I can be better.

That's not how God calls us to live.

God doesn't call us to live in this shame.

He doesn't call us to live in this place.

Last week, edgar talked about how, when he was feeling suicidal, he ran to his parents and his parents hugged him, loved him, told him it's going to be okay.

Some of you didn't have parents like that.

You just had to deal with it.

You don't know what it's like to be unconditionally loved, so it can be so hard to accept this.

See, the curse of living under the law is we are living under the curse of sin and that's going to bring one of two things, or it's going to bring both of them.

It's either going to make us really, really prideful or we're going to live doing everything out of this guilt and this shame and eventually we're going to realize we cannot keep up, we're going to quit, we're going to walk out.

It's too much for me, we can't handle it.

Paul was saying that's the point you need to trust in your salvation and justification in him.

That is the only way.

But then he goes on.

He continues teaching.

That's the message that he was trying to get them to understand.

But he continues.

He goes on in verse 19 through 23.

He says this why, then, was the law given?

It was added for the sake of transgressions, until the seed to whom the promise was made would come.

The law is put into effect through angels by a means of a mediator.

Now, a mediator is not just for one person alone, but God is one.

Is the law, therefore, contrary to God's promises?

Absolutely not, for the law has been granted with the ability, not granted with the ability to give life.

Then righteousness would certainly be on the basis of the law, but the scripture imprisoned everything under sin's power so that the promise might be given, on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ, to those who believe.

Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming Faith was revealed.

In this portion of text he's saying hey, if you try to live by the law, it's gonna lead to pride, it's gonna lead to shame, you're gonna live under the curse of it.

But we know this.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God.

God gave the law.

The law is not a bad thing in and of itself.

He's just saying the law has a very specific purpose.

So number two today what is the purpose of the law?

Why is that Old Testament law there?

How are we, as Christians, supposed to interact with it?

What does it do for us?

What is the purpose of the law?

The first purpose of the law is it was a mirror, the mirror.

It says this in verses 23.

Before this faith came, we were confined under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith was revealed.

What is the purpose of the law?

The law was a mirror.

You guys ever look in a mirror before right.

It shows your.

What Reflection, most of you probably.

When you got up this morning, you look into a mirror.

You notice?

Okay, I gotta comb my hair right.

Your hair's all messed up.

I gotta straighten out my shirt a little bit.

You see that that little spinach, feta, egg wrap omelet thing you got is in your teeth.

So you go get it out there and clean it out, so you're all nice and clean when we come here.

Let me ask you can the mirror fix those things for you?

No, the mirror can't fix those things for you.

The mirror just reveals them.

That's what the law was supposed to do for the nation of Israel.

That's what the law still does for us.

It just revealed their need for a savior.

It revealed their need for a Messiah.

But the law was limited.

It could never justify that.

It was just to show them.

Guys, you cannot do it on your own.

That's why you need to depend on this savior.

The first purpose of the law the law was a mirror.

It reveals our sin, but it cannot justify us from our sin.

Is a mirror.

It reveals our sin, but it cannot justify us from our sin.

The second purpose of the law the law was a babysitter.

How many guys, when you're young, you had a babysitter before Everyone?

Some of us had babysitters.

Come in, some of you were babysitters.

It says this in verse 24 through 26,.

The law then was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith.

But since that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, but through faith you are all sons of God in Christ Jesus.

In verse 24,.

They would have understood this word guardian at the time that we might not understand today.

What a guardian was was if you were a family who had some money, some wealth in this culture, you would hire them in.

There wasn't like a normal school system like we have.

So you'd bring them in to teach your children.

They would live with your family.

They would teach them like math, whatever, geometry, reading, writing, right, some basic skills.

They would teach you the basics of morality and character.

Their job was to train you up, help, show you the way, but eventually, like in our society, eventually you graduate from school.

Right, that's what he was saying.

Eventually, that guardian leaves.

He's giving you the basics, foundations that you need.

But the guardian was always made to be temporary.

Paul is explaining the Old Testament.

Law was temporary until the ultimate guardian, jesus Christ, has come.

And now, instead of following after this guardian and his teachings, now our job is to follow after Jesus and to live in the justification that he gave us.

The purpose of the law was not to justify us from sin, but it was to show us our need for the Savior.

The law had its purpose and it fulfilled its purpose to show us our need, to show us our sinfulness.

What Paul is saying is a Savior has come.

You have accepted him, you have trusted him.

Here's what he was telling them and here's what he's telling us.

He says Christians, we need to stop living like we need a Savior.

We need to start living like we've been saved.

He says we need to stop living like we need a savior.

We need to start living like we've been saved.

We need to stop living like if I don't do all of these good works, if I don't do all of these good things, if I don't read my Bible, then God's going to be angry at me.

Noah Paul is saying is God loves you.

He will never love you more than you are loved right now.

You can't do anything to earn his grace, earn his love.

He already fully loves you.

There's nothing more you have to do to prove yourself to him, to prove your love for him, and just to accept that you are a child of God.

You are a son or daughter.

He does not need you to earn anything.

He's teaching them guys, you are Christ followers.

Start living like it.

Stop living from this place of pride and shame and guilt and start living like you've already been saved.

That leads us to our final point.

Then I'll wrap up and I'll close up, because I know you guys got to go to your Mother's Day parties and brunches and I don't want to make you late for that.

All right, number three how do I know, then?

How do I know if I'm living by the law?

How do I check myself?

Okay, we're not supposed to live by the law Leads to pride and shame.

Law had its purposes, fulfilled its purpose, but how do I know if I'm still being a little legalistic?

Well, the first way you can tell, the first way you know this when you think you are superior to someone, when you have thoughts of superiority.

Verse 27 says this.

Paul finishes out the chapter.

For those of you who are baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ.

There's no Jew or Greek, there's no slave or free, male and female, since you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And if you belong to Christ and you are Abraham's seed.

It airs according to the promise.

Now, he's not saying there's no difference, literally, between these people, groups, culture groups, genders.

He's saying there is no difference in your value in the eyes of God.

When God looks at you, he says, hey, you have been declared righteous.

And what I mean by superiority is I don't think, I really hope not.

I don't think we have anyone who walks into church, right, they come in, they walk in.

Maybe they sit up, walk up, sit up in the balcony.

Then they just stand up in the balcony and they look down at everybody.

They just look around, they turn around, they look at the people behind them in the balcony and go, hmm, yeah, I'm better than all of you.

That's not what I mean when I'm talking about superiority.

Okay, if that's you, I don't know how to help you.

Okay, but we can drift.

If we're being honest, we can drift in superiority sometimes, can't we?

Here's what I mean.

Maybe you ever walk into church and be like, oh, they wore that to church.

Oh, my kid would never wear that.

I would never wear that to church.

I can't believe they wore that.

Maybe you see how they missed a couple of weeks.

They come every other week.

They must not really love God.

They're not super sold out.

That person they're not even serving.

Maybe one day they will get there, maybe Maybe this one.

Oh, they posted that picture on social media.

They put that on Facebook, they put that on Instagram.

Sometimes we all I don't know what it is, for you it might be different we have these thoughts of superiority.

You guys are quiet.

Is it just me?

Not just me?

You guys too right sometimes.

All right, thank you guys, all right.

We have these times where we can drift in superiority instead of saying, man, that person right there, that is a child of God that God loves, that God justifies.

He loves them just as much as he loves me.

He cares about them just as much as he cares about me.

And instead of judging them, god never placed that judgment on them.

That's us dipping into legalism.

There's a second form of legalism that can crop up in our lives that maybe isn't as noticeable.

We don't think of it that much.

It kind of hides itself under the mask of humility, and it's this it's when you think you're superior to someone.

But legalism is also this when you think you are inferior to someone, when you think, man, I wish I was as spiritual as that person.

I wish I could be like that.

Christian Paul really tries to hit home with this on this final verse.

He says in verse 29, and if you belong to Christ and you are Abraham's seed heirs according to the promise.

See, a lot of these Jews, a lot of these Galatians.

They took pride in that they were descendants of Father Abraham, who was the father of the nation of Israel.

So they thought their justification was that and like, hey, abraham is my great-great-great-grandfather, I'm part of that family.

That's not what Paul is talking about.

He's saying if you have been saved, you trusted Jesus as your Savior, you have been adopted into the family of God.

No matter your heritage, no matter your background, you have been adopted.

Here's why that would have been super powerful for them.

See, if you were a natural born son, natural born daughter of your parents and you did something to displease your parents, your parents could write you out of the will.

They could disown you, right?

If your kid's acting a fool some of you parents have thought about this like I'm not giving them my money you could write them out of the will, right?

That's what this was in this culture.

If they were a natural-born son, natural-born daughter, you could disown them.

You could say, hey, if you adopted a person into your family, no matter what they did, no matter how they lived, you legally could never write them out of the will.

They were entitled to that inheritance when you adopted them.

There's nothing that person could do to lose their inheritance by law.

Paul is saying when you become a child of God, you no longer live in shame because there's nothing you can do to lose God's blessing.

There's nothing you can do to lose your eternity in heaven.

There's nothing you can do to lose your position in the eyes of God.

But he's trying to teach them.

But instead we live like this.

We look around, you sin, you mess up, you feel guilty, you begin to distance yourself from God.

Don't read your Bible for a couple days, couple weeks, couple months.

You distance yourself a little further.

You miss church for a couple weeks.

You distance yourself a little further.

That is guilt, that's legalism in your heart, because God's saying, hey, I'm right here.

God never left, he just wants you to come back to him.

He's always there for you.

We were not made to live in shame.

Can I talk to our moms real quick.

This is Mother's Day.

I think this part of feeling inferior can really hit home for moms sometimes.

I think you guys are guilty of this.

Maybe you see the super mom walking to church right, she's got her makeup all done, she's got her hair all nice and perfect.

Her kids come, they're all combed hair, looking good, and you come in, you're like out of breath, carrying your three kids.

One of your, like two of your kids.

They still have pajamas on.

They got two different looking shoes on.

It's just a miracle that you got there.

You have a temptation.

You feel bad about yourself.

Man, if I would just be a better mom, if I could just do some things right, if I could just do things, put them together, if I just raised my children better, they would behave better.

You begin throwing this guilt on you.

Can I say this?

God never told you that.

That's not God's voice in your head.

That's the voice of legalism, that's the voice of shame, that's the voice of comparison.

We still have to start viewing ourselves the way that God views us.

Here's the point.

Today.

It's not that typically we struggle with pride I'm superior.

It's not that we just struggle with oh, I'm inferior.

Most of us probably drift between the two.

There are days where I'm feeling good.

There are days where I'm not feeling so good.

This is what Paul is saying.

He's saying it doesn't matter, it's not about what you do, it's about looking in God and saying do you trust that you are fully justified?

Do you trust that you are fully loved, fully cared for?

And when we get away from that, we have to push these to the side.

When those thoughts creep into our mind, we have to say God, god, god.

I'm gonna focus on who you say I am.

I'm gonna focus on who you say they are and not judge them.

We are all your children, we just wanna follow you.

Here's what I wanna ask you this morning, and then we'll pray.

I want you to ask the Holy Spirit today to reveal your legalism in your heart.

Where have you kind of drifted?

Where are you swaying side to side?

This is what I want you to do.

Then I want you to remind your identity in Jesus, who he says that you are, and rest in that thought, free from the guilt, free from the shame, knowing that you are loved, cared for, child of God.

Let me pray for you this morning.