Galatians | How Does The Law Fit With My Faith? (November 12th, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

If you would grab your Bibles now and turn to Galatians chapter 3.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Galatians chapter 3 is uh is where we are uh today gonna be working our way through uh verses 15 to 25.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Now, question for you.

Are you the kind of person that enjoys doing puzzles?

Okay, I've got in my hand right here uh a puzzle piece that I swiped from a puzzle at my house, like a thousand-piece uh puzzle.

I don't even know if you can see it, it's so small.

Um, but I just want to state publicly that I hate puzzles, right?

I have no interest in puzzles whatsoever.

I got like an amen fist pump from somebody up here.

Love that, right?

Just no interest in games or anything like that.

I don't know if I'm a Scrooge or whatever, but uh I'm really just not into it.

That being said, a lot of people are.

You know, and you're you know, we're heading into, you know, it's the Christmas season, right?

And probably some of you are gonna be taking some holidays through all of that.

And and it seems to be the kind of time where you know family gathers around.

Maybe it's on Christmas Day in the afternoon or on Boxing Day, you're kind of in your pajamas or whatever it is, and the fire's going, and you got Christmas music, and eating far too much candy and all of that.

And and you kind of you spread out the thousand-piece puzzle on the on the kitchen table, and and and you love that.

And and so you you grab a little piece like this, and this one is like entirely gray.

Like, where do you put this, right?

And and and you're and you grab it and you kind of you spin it around in your hand, and you're like, where does this go?

And I'm gonna try this here.

Okay, no, it doesn't go there.

If I spin it, no, it doesn't, you're like, mash, trying to mash it in and make it fit, and no, okay, so maybe it goes somewhere else, and maybe you put it down and you move on to all of that.

And and and really what you're trying to figure out, and you're really asking yourself the question how does this piece, how does this puzzle piece fit into the into the big picture that this puzzle is is becoming?

Now, Christ followers, we ask a very similar question, I would say, uh, when it comes to the Old Testament law.

Right?

We're like, where or or or how does it fit?

Right, how does it fit?

What exactly is the purpose of the of the law?

You know, in in all of the rules that we read about, maybe it's in Leviticus or Deuteronomy, the first five books of the of the Old Testament.

You know, how does all of that fit in light of the gospel, the fact that Jesus, Jesus saves me, and it's not my obedience to the law in any way that that makes me righteous?

Right?

For a lot of us, the law feels just like a puzzle piece.

And we're and we're trying to figure out, you know, in the in the grand picture of scripture and salvation and life and all of that, where we're kind of like, you know, I don't really know uh what to do with this.

Right?

Like, how does it, where does it fit exactly?

How am I supposed to relate to it?

Now, thankfully, of course, Paul addresses this.

He talks about it, and he addresses it in the passage that we're gonna study here today, and and so far he's been building this case to the Galatian churches, the churches in this region, that that righteousness, of course, is something that they receive by faith.

Right?

It's an act of it's an act of God.

It's not something that they earn through their religious performance to the law, right?

It's not about getting circumcised and that makes God love me.

It's not about eating certain foods or staying away from certain foods.

And in our day, it's not about it's not about coming to church.

Coming to church doesn't save me.

It's not about my moral performance.

If I would just behave pretty well and act Christianly, whatever that means, right, maybe the Lord will somehow be, you know, really blessed and impressed.

And maybe somehow, you know, let me into heaven at the end of it.

Okay, Paul has been teaching us all the way through.

That's that's that's not what it's about.

And so what Paul's doing here is he's he's anticipating the obvious question that's gonna be bubbling up in their hearts and in their minds as they're thinking about it's not about the law, it's not about the law, it's not about the law, it's about faith in Jesus Christ, faith in Jesus Christ, it's salvation by grace through faith.

They're hearing this over and over again.

What's the obvious question?

Uh what's up with the law then?

Right?

Like what's what's going on with all of this?

What's what's the point of it?

Right?

How does it how does it fit with my faith?

How does it fit?

Okay, well, let's take a look at this then.

Galatians 3, 15 to 25.

You can uh you can read along with me.

All right, it says to give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.

It does not say and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your offspring, who is Christ.

This is what I mean.

The law, which came 430 years afterwards, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void.

For if the inheritance comes from comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise.

But God, of course, gave it to Abraham by a promise.

Why then the law?

Well, it was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.

And it was put in place through angels by an e intermediary.

Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

Certainly not.

For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

Father, we come before you.

Lord, we are crying out for you to work in our hearts here this morning.

God, I am under no illusions as the guy who has the privilege of opening up your word.

I'm under no illusions that I have any power, I have any strength within myself to do any lasting, make accomplish any lasting change in the heart of anybody here today, Lord.

We are we are desperate for you.

We are crying out for you, Lord.

By your spirit, would you move and would you change us?

Would you glorify your son in us, Lord?

Would you save the lost?

Would you sanctify the saved?

God, please do this.

Lord, help us to understand the law.

Help us to understand what is the purpose of this.

How does this fit into our faith?

Help us to not submit to it as a system of salvation when it when that system is just short-sighted.

It's not enough to save us.

And so, God, help us with these things.

Lord, I pray that we would be a church.

I pray that we would be a people who are so excited and fired up about what you have done that we could not wait to live for you.

Much like the testimonies that we just heard, we have students, we have adults excited to get into here publicly.

It's not something that they're comfortable doing, but I hey, I want to share the good news of Jesus.

I want people to know that he has rescued me from sin and that I am living for him by his grace, by his spirit.

So Lord, help us in this endeavor.

God, to the glory of your Son Jesus.

We pray it all in his name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, so again, the question: how does the law fit with my faith?

Right?

How's how's how's it fit?

Well, first of all, you've got some notes there.

If you are new to our church, uh if you had a bulletin, you got a bulletin, there's some notes in there, and you can fill all of this stuff in and make your own notes and study that throughout the week if you like.

Okay, well, here's the first thing.

First of all, it was never intended, that's the law, it was never intended to alter God's promise to save.

It was never never intended to alter God's promise to save.

Now, let's get some of the context here.

All right, let's get that.

So last week we we looked at the earlier verses in chapter three, and we looked at verse eight.

And verse eight says this, okay, take a look.

It says, and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel, okay, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed.

Be blessed.

So right there, it's a it's a reference to the Genesis 12, if you want to write that down.

The Genesis 12 promised to Abraham that God would eventually send a savior, okay?

He would send a savior for all mankind.

And that's what he means by the word blessed that we see uh in our verse there.

Salvation comes through God's promise to save.

God's like, I am going to do this.

And he sealed it with a covenant with Abraham, all right, where he puts the onus on himself to save humanity.

Now, I don't know if you're familiar with that covenant, all if you've read that uh much at all at all.

But again, Genesis 15 is another place that you could uh another thing that you could jot down, and in there the covenant is formed.

And and the Lord says to uh says to Abraham, get a uh get a cow, get a goat, get a ram, get a dove, and get a pigeon.

Okay, he's like, get a bunch of animals, bring them out, cut them in half.

Okay, he did this with all of them except for the two birds, and place each each half uh uh aside from each other, across from each other.

And what he did then is he created a path between uh the two parts.

Okay, and what would normally happen during a covenant, during an agreement like this, this is a normal thing to do uh back in this day, is what would what would happen is both parties would then would then walk through the path between these animals together, and that would be them agreeing to this covenant.

And the idea would be let us die like these animals if I am to break this covenant.

Little graphic, right?

Maybe just a bit, right?

But but this is the way that it was back then.

Only the difference here in this situation is that a deep sleep fell upon Abraham.

And so instead of Abraham and the Lord in some way passing, you know, between these animal parts, just the Lord did it.

Just the Lord did it.

And what does that signify?

That signifies that the promise to come and save, the promise that Abraham's descendants would be more than the stars in the sky, the sand on the seashore, all of that, all of that would be on God alone.

The promise fulfilled would be the onus is completely on the Lord.

It doesn't depend on what Abraham can do, it depends only on Yahweh, depends only on God.

Now, verse 15, in our passage, keep going here.

Paul says to give it a human example, brothers, even if uh, or even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified.

Okay, so what Paul does here is he gives uh just kind of an everyday kind of human example uh to help illustrate this point here.

All right, and so he says here that then even in a human covenant, even in a in a human agreement, you can't change it.

You can't you can't alter it once it's been ratified, once it's been finalized.

So, for example, if a father makes up a legal will, okay, where he's giving his money to his daughter and to his son, but he decides to leave more money to his daughter, okay, and let's say the the father dies and and the and the the will has been finalized, ratified.

But let's say the circumstance changes now.

Let's say that that the son goes through a rough patch and and and loses all that he owns and and goes through a difficult time where he could actually use the money more than the daughter uh could.

Guess what?

It doesn't matter.

Right?

It doesn't matter.

The will holds up despite the fact that the conditions have changed.

Alright, so if human contracts are binding, they hold up.

The idea here is imagine how much more so God is gonna keep his promises and his covenants.

No, no circumstance, no nothing new, no change is gonna alter in any way the promise that God made.

You kind of see where this is going here?

Okay, keep going.

Verse 16.

It says, now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring.

Okay, it says, it did not say to his offsprings, plural, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring, singular, who is, and he states it right there, Christ.

Okay, so what Paul is doing here is under the inspiration of the of the Holy Spirit, he's showing us through the promise of Genesis 12 that Jesus Christ is the offspring through whom God would fulfill his promise to save Abraham and save all the nations, save you and I.

Jesus Christ is the is the fulfillment of all of this.

Now stay with me here.

You guys tracking with all this?

Right?

We're going deeper and deeper into this.

Stay with me, don't fall asleep yet.

All right, that's for the afternoon.

Okay?

Alright, this is what Paul's getting at, verse 17.

This is what I mean.

I love it.

You're like, okay, I better pay attention.

Right?

It's gonna get to it.

This is what I mean.

The law, which came 430 years afterwards, so after the promise that God would save through Jesus Christ, okay?

So the law, which came 430 years afterwards, does not annul, meaning does not cancel or alter in any way a covenant previously ratified, finalized by God so as to make the promise void.

Okay, so Paul's saying, look, the the covenant, the promise that that God made with Abraham happened happened 430 years before the law was given to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Now, I know that some of us are like ESV study Bible warriors, right?

And you've probably already looked at the note and you're like, wait a second, it's 465 years, right?

And what's that?

Is the Bible not to be trusted?

Right?

Why does it say 430 years?

Well, it's technically it's 465 years after he mentioned it, after God promised this to Abraham here in this instance.

Yeah, it's 465 years, but it's 430 years after the last time it was stated in Scripture.

So what God did was he first stated the covenant with Abraham, and then he restated it to Abraham's son Isaac, and then restated it again to Isaac's son Jacob.

And so it's 430 years after the last time it was mentioned in Scripture that God gave the Ten Commandments and initiated the law to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Okay, so Paul's saying that the promise, that the covenant that God made to Abraham cannot be broken.

It's a binding agreement.

The coming of the law to Moses at Sinai doesn't in any way alter the promise.

You understand that?

Yeah, it came in here, but but it does not change the fact that salvation depends on God's promise to save, not on the law and our our adherence, our obedience uh to it.

Okay, it doesn't depend on that at all.

Now, why would he say all of this?

Why would he go here?

Well, well, because he's not only anticipating the Galatian church's question about this, about how you know how does the law fit with my faith and and all of that, he's also refuting false teachers.

Remember that?

That's the common theme kind of through the whole thing.

The false teachers are continually trying to drag people back into slavery and trying to earn their salvation, a salvation that has been earned through Jesus Christ for them.

We had nothing to the equation at all.

Jesus did it all, we did nothing.

But the false teachers are like, no, you gotta do something.

You gotta obey the law, you gotta get circumcised, you gotta stay away from certain foods and all of that, and so he's refuting all of this.

And so what were they saying?

Well, essentially they were they were kind of saying to A uh to Paul here, he's like, Oh, all right, fair point, Paul.

Okay, so God made a promise to save Abraham, and it had nothing to do with works at the time.

What do you think of that, Paul?

Right?

But the the law came in, right?

430 years later, in comes the law, which means the agreement's changed.

God has has changed his mind, hasn't he?

And yeah, it depended on a promise at first, but now he's improving the promise by adding, in some way, works into the equation.

It's like the law, the law helps us get saved.

Okay, he says, he says, no chance, no chance at all.

He's like, if uh if a man-made covenant can't be annulled once it's been ratified, no way God's going back in his word, right?

And then he says in verse 18, for if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by a promise.

Okay, it says, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.

He's like, you can't have it both ways.

It's not God does everything and you do some.

That doesn't worry.

The law and the promise are mutually exclusive.

It's it's purely one or the other.

There's no blending here of any of this.

It's not it's not God's promise to save and also works.

And I love here how Paul uses the word inheritance.

Inheritance.

That's such a that's such a good word for us because uh an inheritance isn't something that you earn.

Right?

If you're a child and you're getting an inheritance from your from your father, from your from your parents, it's it's not because you've done anything.

All you did was be born.

Right?

You you you simply receive it.

And so what's Paul doing here?

He's putting the puzzle together, right?

He's starting to assemble it to help us understand how all of this kind of works, how the law ultimately fits in, and he and he starts with the reminder as he has done all throughout, and we need to continue to do for ourselves that salvation is by faith and God's promise to save.

Always has been that way, always, always will be that way.

It's how you and I we come to faith in Jesus Christ and are justified, and it's the reality that drives our sanctification, our our growth in Christ, all the stuff that we talked about just last just last week.

Right?

We don't get saved by grace and then flip the script on the Lord and then try and earn our growth through obedience.

Right?

We talked about that, and you know, I it's not like, well, I received salvation, and now I better try and get God to approve of me by coming to church and reading my Bible and being nice to people.

That's not what it is.

We we grow by by grace just as much as we enter the kingdom uh by grace.

Okay, the law did come on the scene, for sure, eventually it did, but it was never intended to modify or or change or cancel or annul or alter again in any way God's promise to save.

That wasn't the point of it.

Which means what?

It means that the law had some other purpose, right?

It had some other function, which was well, which was what?

Okay, how does the law fit with my faith?

Well, second thing, here we go, we're getting into it.

Okay, it convinces me of how desperately I need saving.

That's what the law does.

Okay, so far we've seen what the law doesn't do.

Paul's made that crystal clear to us.

Okay, so what is the purpose of it?

What does it accomplish exactly?

Well, Paul puts the question out for us here in verse 19.

Why then the law?

Thank you, Paul.

Thank you for just raising the question for us.

This is what we've been thinking.

This is what we've been wondering.

Maybe we haven't outright asked the question, but we have wondered it on some level.

What's what's up with the law?

And he says this it was added because of transgressions.

We'll come back to that.

It was added because of transgressions until the offspring, who is Christ, should come to whom the promise had been made.

And then he says this part, this is really interesting.

He says, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediate uh intermediary or a mediator.

Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

What's up with that?

What's that all about?

Well, Paul, he doesn't fully explain this.

He doesn't really explain this really at all, what he means here, but it seems to be about how how angels were were present.

Present with the Lord when he gave the Ten Commandments to Moses up on the mountain.

I think we can probably wrap our mind around that.

But because God is one, the ultimate revelation comes through him alone.

Now, that maybe doesn't clear up anything for anybody, right?

If you're trying to understand that.

In fact, scholars for forever have been wrestling with what does this verse mean?

And at the end of the day, we don't know for sure.

Right?

We don't know exactly.

And some guys will say, I don't really know exactly what this means.

Let's move on.

And I tend to lean a little bit towards that.

Now, the good thing about all of this is this verse here, it doesn't in any way impact the main thrust of the verses all around it, which is so awesome.

We don't have to be left confused about anything like that.

And some of these mysteries uh are with the Lord uh for uh for sure, right?

And we're not exactly sure what it's all about.

But all of that being said, back to verse 19.

Okay?

Why then the law?

Okay, why then the law?

He says it was added because of transgressions.

I just finished the sentence for you.

I gave you an opening.

Right?

We got added because of transgressions, because of sin.

And this is how this is how Tim Keller puts it, if you want to read the quote up there.

He says, the law did not come to tell us about salvation, but about what?

About sin.

About sin.

In Romans chapter 7, verse 7, you might want to jot that down.

Romans 7:7

Paul says that if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.

I would not have known it.

For or I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had said, You shall not covet.

I wouldn't have understood that.

In other words, if it wasn't for the coming of the law, guess what?

We wouldn't understand, we wouldn't have the half of it.

Just how how corrupt and and and broken and sinful we really are at the core of our being.

The law expertly helps me to see my true spiritual state before a holy God.

The law lays me bare for that.

And listen, it is not a pretty picture.

Right?

Have you started to understand that as you're growing with the Lord and you and you so badly want to live a holy life?

Have you noticed that, oh wow, I've got this thing called a flesh?

And this flesh still wants all kinds of bad things to happen and it wants me to do them.

Right?

Have you noticed that and you wrestle with this?

There's this desire in me to follow Jesus, but there's also this desire in me to just live for myself and to do it selfish and to live for pleasure and do outright awful, horrible things.

Have you sensed this wrestling match within you?

I referenced Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 · chapter mention

You might want to go back and just read that entire section there as Paul just for us, he just kind of shows us the wrestling match that he has had.

He's like, oh, wretched man that I am! You know, who will deliver me from this body of death?

He's like, Thanks be to Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Jesus will do it.

The law helps me understand who I am, and it's it's ugly.

Now, how does it do that?

How does the law do that?

Well, it show it does it by showing me what the standard is.

Do you know what the standard is?

Perfection.

Perfection.

That is the standard that God is holding us to.

And as I try to achieve that perfection through my obedience to the standard, and as the Spirit of God is working in me, I'm filled, and maybe you have sensed this too, you're filled with this sickening kind of realization that deep down we don't measure up.

We don't measure up to the standard.

So understand that the overarching purpose of the law is to convince you and I of how desperately we need saving.

We're desperate for it.

I mean, you know the Ten Commandments, right?

It's like kind of the the whole law summed up in ten things.

You know what the first commandment is?

Let's start there.

It's have no other gods before me.

Okay, so you hear that.

That's the very first commandment.

Do you know that we are all in a perpetual state of breaking that command?

We are constantly breaking that, sinning all the time.

We all have so many gods that we love and care about, and spiritually speaking, bow down to and think of as more important than the one true God.

Well, you know, maybe for some of us it's money.

And this pursuit of money drives us, and this is what we want, and this is the thing that gets us up out of bed in the morning.

Maybe for us it's the you know, it's it's it's having like the most dreaded abs.

Right?

I I I'm I'm in a CrossFit and I'm religious about that, and and that is like my church.

Right?

And I'm I I work out like crazy trying to attain this.

If I don't have a good body, I feel down about myself.

That is uh that is a God that we are chasing after.

For others, it's uh it's a relationship.

You hold that on a pedestal, and if I don't have a, you know, if I'm not dating somebody, if I don't have the perfect spouse, if if I don't have that, I feel incomplete.

And I sense my brokenness, and you're you're trying to fill that that hole with relationship after relationship, and this one has fallen apart, and this one is broken, and that person isn't perfect.

And over and over again we we fall short.

And we show that we are just not good, have no other gods before me.

Guess what?

We're all breaking it.

Our hearts operate from that position constantly.

Do I even need to go through the other nine?

No, we are we are not good.

Okay, we are not good.

This is not not at all pretty.

We desperately need saving.

Are you sensing that?

I need something more than these idols that I worship.

I need some strength that is not my own.

I don't have the ability to perfect myself, I don't have the ability to fill my heart with the peace and the joy and all of that that I want.

Only only something or someone else can do it.

Okay, here's what John Stott had to say about the law.

This is a rather lengthy quote, but so helpful.

Read along.

It says, after God gave the promise to Abraham, he gave the law to Moses.

Why?

Well, he had to make things worse before he could make them better.

The law exposed sin, provoked sin, condemned sin.

The purpose of the law was to lift the lid off man's respectability and disclose what he really was underneath.

Sinful, rebellious, guilty, under the judgment of God, and helpless to save himself.

And the law must be allowed to do its God-given duty today.

One of the great faults of the contemporary church is the tendency to soft pedal sin and judgment.

We must never bypass the law and come straight to the gospel.

To do so is to contradict the plan of God in biblical history.

No man has ever approached the gospel until the law was first revealed, uh, had first revealed him to himself.

It is only against the inky blackness of the night sky that stars begin to appear.

And it is only against the dark background of sin that the uh sin and judgment that the gospel shines forth.

Wow.

Truthfully, folks, I gotta be honest with you, I cringe, cringe when I hear professing believers and Christ followers say things.

Maybe it's during a difficult season in life, you know, like, why is this happening to me and I don't deserve this?

You know, I'm a good person.

Right?

I hear people say this, and maybe you've said it, or or maybe you've thought that, and when I hear it, I'm thinking, no, no, no, you don't, you don't get it.

You don't get it, you're you're not, you're not deep down a good person.

We've all sinned.

We've all fallen short of the glory of God.

If you still think you are a good person, I would just ask you this.

Why did you receive Jesus?

Because at the end of the day, you don't think you need him.

And maybe that's why, maybe, maybe that's why we we care so little about Jesus in our Christian walk.

Because again, we don't really think we need him that desperately.

We have not been laid bare by the Lord, by the, by the law.

Listen, the law shows us that we're not pretty good.

We're really bad.

And we have to swallow that that bitter pill before grace and the gospel will ever taste sweet to us.

Listen, Harvest, if you've ever if you've ever struggled with being lukewarm, notice my hand's already up.

If you ever struggled being lukewarm or, you know, not sold out to Jesus, and you know, why don't I seem to love him as as as much as I should?

Right?

Uh a big part of that is is likely because you've stopped allowing the law to unearth how how wretched you really are.

Now listen, is that a is that a fun, feel-good process?

No.

No, it's not at all.

But is it necessary?

Absolutely.

Because when we understand how brutal we really are, and how we have fallen short and live in constant state of rebellion to just the first of Ten Commandments, not to mention all the rest.

And then we start to see the cross and we realize what Jesus went through, and we realize it's because He re He knew that we couldn't save ourselves.

When we see that it's because He loved us so great greatly, and that even though all of our sin was ultimately against Him, it was a rebellion against the Creator God who created us to know him.

When we when we see what he went through on the cross, and we we see the resurrection, we see all of it, that's when it becomes awesome.

That's when we start to realize that God is amazing, Jesus Christ is Lord, and I want to give my life to him.

How does it start?

It starts when we see how wretched and broken we are.

And it's the law that points all of that out to us.

If you stop thinking about that and you are, as John starts, as soft pedaling sin, and I'm not confessing this, I'm not looking at this, and you know, sometimes my my spouse will gently point this out to me, and I don't want to hear it.

And I and I don't go to a small group, or I've stopped going to small group, or I'll I'll come to church, but I'm not gonna get involved because I don't want people to know who I who I really am and what I'm really all about.

And listen, we need the law to show us this.

It points out how dark it really is in our souls and that reality.

And as we realize that and as we continue to repent of how wretched we are and how blind we are to our self-righteousness, we're so blind to our blindness about all of that, and then remind ourselves again of God's kindness to us and the richness to us in Jesus Christ and saving us, then we'll begin to see the truth of the gospel, start accomplishing great things in our lives.

We'll start to see the change that we want.

The motives of our heart start to change.

It's not, well, I better come to church, I better do all these things that God tells me I better do.

I know, now I want to do it because I see how how lost I was and I see how how much God has rescued me and how great He is.

The law plays a huge role in that, doesn't it?

It convinces me of how desperately I need saving.

How else does the law fit with my faith?

How else?

Well, it points to how Christ is the savior I really need.

Christ is the savior I really need.

Verse 21.

He says, is the law then contrary to the promises of God?

Certainly not.

For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

Okay, so it's not that the law contradicts the promises of God to save, it's just that it can't give us life, as he puts it here.

It can't, it can't give us eternal life.

Only only Jesus can.

Okay, keep going, verse 22.

But the scripture, I love the imagery here, the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

Okay, so this is telling us that the law functions as a sort of prison guard, if you want to look at it that way.

The law holds us, holds us captive, and and we are in chains in our sin until Jesus Christ came and broke the chains and busted us out of jail and led us to freedom by his grace and by his power.

Okay, so if these Galatians, Paul is saying, or or us, all of these centuries later, look to our obedience to the law to set us free or to save us or to make us right in God's eyes, we're fully missing the entire point of the law.

We're missing it.

It came not as our rescuer, but as a kind of guardian.

Again, a prison guard, a jail guard that shows us that we're in chains and points to how Jesus Christ is the savior, the rescuer that you and I really need.

That's the law's function.

Keller puts it like this the law, if we're if we're really listening to it, continually emphasizes that we need a righteousness, a power, a love for God that is that is beyond ourselves and beyond the law.

We need salvation by grace.

So listen, listen very carefully.

All right, if your if your relationship with God, if if your Christian walk and your life tends to be characterized by the presence of a sense of guilt, right, that you kind of carry with you.

And it might be this overwhelming sense of guilt.

It may just kind of be this underlying, nagging sense of guilt that you don't measure up.

You're not good enough.

You're never gonna be good enough.

Or maybe for you it's it's fear.

Fear that that if you sin, when you when you fail, God will punish you.

Right?

Do you have that?

I don't want to, I don't want to make a mistake, or God's gonna squish me like a bug.

Right?

Or maybe it's it's just this nagging insecurity deep in your soul that, you know what, God probably doesn't really love me.

Do you have that?

Listen, the presence of all of these things, the reality of these things driving you inwardly, all suggests that your heart is functioning from a misguided sense that the law can be your savior.

If only, if only I could obey, right?

If only I could could obey God perfectly, then I wouldn't feel guilty all the time.

You ever think that?

Or or or or or man, I I I better not fall into temptation in this area or else or else God is gonna get me good.

Right?

Problems, pain, that's just around the corner.

And it's it's fear that you live in.

Or or oh, right, I I failed yet again.

How on earth could God ever love me?

He must not, and then you spiral into despair about all of that.

Understand, the law makes a terrible savior, a terrible savior.

It was never intended to function that way.

Rather, it points to the one who is the perfect savior, it points to Jesus.

The law tries to get us to be our savior, it tries to get us to perform properly.

The enemy tries to remind you, you know what, you do fall short.

God, God couldn't possibly love you.

And it's in those moments that we need to remind ourselves of where we stand.

Yeah, you know what?

I do fall short.

I am broken.

But in the cross of Jesus Christ, I stand.

Through what Jesus has done for me, that is my hope, that is my standing, that is how the Lord looks at me now.

Yeah, I get it.

Practically speaking, I'm still kind of a mess.

Right?

I I fail a lot.

I'm still kind of grinding it out here, rolling around in the mud, making a mess of things, but in all of that, God is gracious and he loves me, and I refuse to try and earn it because God has earned it for me.

God, uh Jesus is the perfect Savior.

He is the one that we rest in.

He is the one that took the guilt on himself.

He is the one who motivates us to obey out of gratitude, not fear.

Thank you, Lord, for what you have done.

The one who gives us that rock solid security in ourselves, not plagued by insecurity.

Because our salvation depends on what Jesus has already accomplished.

It's in that that we're standing.

That's how the Lord looks at us.

It's not on me.

It's not on my flawed performance and record.

It's not in any way on what I what I do or fail to do.

The law certainly has its place, but it's not to save.

It's not to save.

It's never gonna save you.

We need to we need to stop referring to it like that on a heart level, as though it will.

It points us to Jesus Christ.

He's the one who did it.