The Law vs. The Promise

Well, good morning. Today, we're going to do part two of and look at the verses that I have. I was assigned or I assigned myself. I should say that my kind of we do this together. And so we look at this. Actually, this arrangement really came from Bob Echol. I'm going to. But we actually have modified it a little bit. So I'm going to talk about particularly the 20 and 21.

But it's actually part of a larger set that asks the question, why the law? And that's a really crucial question that hopefully we can we're going to review that today. If you weren't here last week, you won't. Hopefully you'll get some insight from last week. It's a crucial question because I think it it tells us a lot about. where we're at in terms of believers in the Lord Jesus. So let's go ahead here and just kind of jump into this.

I like Chester Macaulay. I remember I mentioned last week I had the three M's. I had Macaulay, Merriman, and Malloy. Those are the three M's. And then Bonnie pointed out, Roger, you like Weiss too. And Weiss, the W flipped upside down. There's another M there. So anyway.

OK, so. So McCauley's outline, starting with this section 19 to 24, remember the previous section that Mike taught, talked about them, talked about contracts. And Mike was a perfect person to teach that section. He talked about contracts, how once you sign a contract, it's, you know, normally it's a done deal. Now, of course, not society. You can lawyers can do anything. But anyway, typically when you. When that's that's ratified, it's a done deal. So in the section that Mike taught it. It talked about that.

So that was one objection that you can't change. God's promise cannot be changed. So with that teaching, the question that Paul tries to answer in this section is, well, if that's the case, if you can't change the grace contract he made with Abraham, where Abraham believed God and was reckoned to him as righteousness, then why do we even need the law? If that's a done deal and God established it, why in the world do we even need the law? So that's what I'm attempting to answer here, and Paul actually spends quite a bit of time answering that question.

Why the law? So this section here, McCauley has labeled, the law has a definite purpose. So first of all, why the law? And Paul will give an answer, which I'll talk about here shortly. And the law has a character. It's holy, righteous, and just. We'll talk about that. And there's an incorrect conclusion that Paul presents here that comes out of the flow of logic. And then the last couple of sections here is what he calls the success of the law.

And that's next week. So come next week and you'll learn what are the things the law is successful at. Because, you know, probably here at Holly Hills, badmouth the law a lot, and we do it with the right motive. But anyway, next week you're going to learn the law has a purpose. It's actually a jailer, which seems kind of, whoa, that's a jailer.

And it's a tutor, which most of us have heard before. So next week, tune in for that part. So let's go back and talk about review last week, verse 19. So here's a review from last week. Okay, why the law? The law was added or better placed alongside.

You know, the Jews, the Jews were all about their argument. The Judaizers said, hey, well, yeah, I've heard about Abraham. Yeah, the Lord talked with Abraham. They made a covenant. But guess what, guys? He gave us this thing called the law, and that's something else we need to do too. You need to be circumcised, and you need to follow the Mosaic Law. They wanted to add it in a sense of connecting it to the promise, and Paul's arguing you can't do that. It was placed alongside, in parallel, with the law. And it says, for the sake of transgressions, not because of transgressions.

God didn't, in the heavenly scene, God didn't say, boy, things are tough down there. I sent a flood. Boy, we got some good things happen there. But now, boy, they're back at it again. I got to send some law down there and get those guys whipped into shape. I'm going to send that line and they'll know that they're really in trouble. It's not because of the law. It's for the sake of transgression. In a way, God wanted to make things Bad enough, man would say, I need a Savior. That's what he was up about. So transgression is the idea to step over a limit, to provide an external standard, God's standard.

Actually, Margaret was answering this question in class. I thought that was pretty cool. She had a couple of these she had right on. To show how man badly needs a Savior, to reveal the sinfulness of the sin nature. There's at least three that you could add more.

So that the law was added, placed alongside, for the sake of transgressions, to reveal our sin nature, to reveal the sinfulness of man, not to fix something. God was in the business of fixing something with the law. And I'm afraid today, in our world, many people think the law is going to fix it. Just give them a law. Think about our society. We make laws, you know, they crank those laws out as fast as we can. You know, oh, something's wrong? We'll pass a law and take care of that. Well, God is not working that way. He's working different. Okay.

It was placed alongside. The law was placed alongside. And it's actually, you know, if you think about it, this was God's grace. It flowed out of his grace because he realized man needed to have a benchmark. Without a benchmark, man needs a benchmark. Okay. So that's 9a. 9b. 9b kind of talks about the character of the law. And the character of the law is pretty amazing.

It says, you know, if you think of the, how was the law given on Mount Sinai? Remember Mount Sinai, the, you know, Moses goes up and the Lord kind of descends and he comes down, he comes with 10,000 holy ones. If you read that passage in Deuteronomy, there's 10,000 holy ones, or holy angels, pretty magnificent.

The mediator was Moses. He was the one that God said, you know, I speak with Moses face to face. And Moses even had an issue we see talked about later on. His face would would show a glow because he was with the Lord. He talked to Moses was his mediator. And the time period of the law is described in 19B. It's until the seed would come, until the Lord Jesus would come.

And this was promised and Mike covered this in in Galatians 3.16, and that reads, Now the promises were made 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. So the law had a purpose, and this talks about the seed coming. I'm getting a little confused here, but this verse is really important.

For Christ is the end of the law, for righteousness to everyone who believes. So the law, as we're going to see, and I like this picture that I borrowed from Merriman. So it shows the law in the red circle, and it shows it had a time period. It started with the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, and it lasted until Christ came and died on the cross. So it had a definite time period, whereas the grace provision is an eternal provision. God dealt with Abraham, promised him a land, a seed, and a blessing, and that's an eternal covenant. Whereas the law is a temporary thing for a reason, and we're going to delve into that more.

Okay. All right, so let's go on here. So let's look at verse 20. And this is the one I think that was talked about. It's kind of hard to understand. Now, a mediator is not for one party only. Whereas God is only one. So part A, I believe part A, if you look at the context of the previous verses, the idea here is that. that a mediator, it requires, why have a mediator if you only have one party, right?

If you have two parties, then a mediator is very valuable. And Moses was the man, right? He was a man that spoke to God, he brought the commandments down, he interfaced with the people, there were all kinds of problems there, they broke those, then he went back up the mountain and got some new tablets and brought them down. So God was the mediator.

So the first part of that verse is talking about the fact that a mediator is for two parties. Whereas, but in contrast to, part B of that verse is that God acted alone, and by implication, He acted alone with Abraham, right? He didn't act alone with Israel, He acted alone with Abraham.

He came to Abraham, put him to sleep, right? Mike talked about the fact that In the Abrahamic covenant, remember they had these offerings. They cut them in two. Their practice was to put the offerings, they cut the different animals in two, place them on like different sides of the aisle here and they would walk down the center to sign the covenant. Well, Abraham was put to sleep. He was cutting Z's and God's essence walked through that to seal that covenant.

So you need a mediator for that. So the contrast here in this verse is contrast between that we need a mediator for the law, but no mediator is required for the promise, the promise that was made to Abraham. So there was a really good outline that Hal did, and I kind of repackaged it a little bit. So let's go through this outline about this verse. So what's this verse saying? So first of all, just stating the verse, a mediator is not for one party only, whereas God is only one. So who's addressing the verse?

So in the two parts, we're going to address. So the first part is, speaks to the law to Israel, which Moses was a mediator. In contrast, God alone gave the promise to Abraham. How many parties? Some of this is a no brainers. Two parties with the law, right? We have God and Israel with Moses as a mediator. Only one party with a promise, God alone. Abraham was asleep. Was the media required? Yes, for the law, with Moses. No, not for the promise.

What type of covenant? In scripture there are a couple different types of covenants, basically conditional and unconditional. It was conditional and temporal with Israel. And we're going to see, if you look through there, that And then with, I'll back up here in a second, it was unconditionally eternal with Abraham. But the conditional part, remember with Israel, there was the blessings and the curse.

And there's a passage that really kind of brings that out in Deuteronomy. Let me see here. In Deuteronomy 11, the Lord says, and this kind of points out the fact that it's conditional and it's temporal and it's based upon works. And it says in Deuteronomy 11, C. I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse.

A blessing if you listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, which I am commanding you, and a curse if you do not listen to the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I am commanding you today by following other gods which you have not known.

So it was conditioned upon Israel obeying the Lord, and it was temporal until Christ would come. What are the obligations? And I kind of got a little bit ahead of myself here. Israel was to keep the commandments, and it was either they were blessed, they kept it, they were cursed, they did not. God fulfilled the promise of righteousness via the seed to Abraham. How is man to respond? Under the law covenant, he has to obey, he has to do something. Under the Abrahamic covenant, faith is required. That's the only thing that's required. What is God's purpose? God's purpose is to reveal man's sin under the law and God's righteousness. And under the Abrahamic covenant is to reveal God's grace. That was a grace-given covenant.

OK, so with that in mind, let's go on. Paul's going to launch into verse 21, which is going to talk about, he's going to make an argument, and he's going to say the law is not this. And for the sake of argument, it can't be this. So let's just read the verse, and we'll see if I can.

Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be. Contrary is against. The promise of God, in this context, was a covenant with Abraham. So is the law contrary to that, is the question. And it says, may it never be. God forbid, can it ever be. So basically, and so here's a verse that really kind of points that out.

So then, the law is holy. The commandment is holy and righteous and good. God's law is perfectly holy, but that promise is not contrary to the law. The law is for a specific purpose, and I want to kind of point that out here. Okay, so let's go on to the next part of this. So in answering this question, I found some things that I like from Wiest here. So in answering the question, is the law contrary to God's promises? We're going to go through another list, and it's somewhat similar to what Tal did, but I think it actually points out some really good points here. The law is a ministry of condemnation, right? So the results of the law. So what happens under the law system, right? If you obey the law, then you're blessed. If you don't obey the law, you're cursed. You're constantly focused on the law. Your focus can't be on God, can't be on the Lord. It's focused on keeping these set of laws, which are absolutely holy, but it's going to show that man cannot do that. He cannot accomplish that.

The promise, our ministry is a salvation. The promise is, believe God, believe what He's done. Believe in the person and work of Jesus Christ. In Abraham's case, it says that he believed, as amazing as it says, he believed in the Lord Jesus, even though Lord Jesus didn't come until many, many years later. He believed in him.

The law judges a person on the basis of obedience or disobedience, the blessing and the curse. The promise judges man on the basis of faith. Man is judged whether he... And judge, I don't think maybe is the best word that could be used there. God evaluates a man. God wants fellowship with a man. And the fellowship is based on his faith. So that's how it's his interaction. He's not judging man on what he's done, because those deeds have already been paid for by Christ.

The law whose ministry is one of condemnation was not intended to express God's attitude toward man. That wasn't the intent. It wasn't to show. God is not showing in the law how he feels about man. God's attitude toward man is one of grace. That's what shows his attitude toward man. You know, we see in different parts of scripture, the Lord says, I'm not willing that any should perish, that all should come to repentance. That's God's attitude toward man. One of wanting men to come to understand who he is and what he's done. And the law is not the basis of God's judgment on man.

And that's kind of, you think, wow. You know, some people think, I would say a large field thinks that if I live a good life, and it sounds familiar if you talk with your friends and relatives of people unsaved, if I live a good life, God's going to have to accept me. In fact, I said that one time before I was a believer. I said, well, I'm doing the best I can do. And when I get to meet with God, I'm going to tell him I've done the best I have done, and that's got to be enough, right?

Well, I didn't learn until later, that's all wrong. That's not what he's desiring. He's not desiring what good things I might do, because I'm evaluating those good things. He's going to base it totally upon my relationship to his son. And that's the distinguishing here. And that's why I think Paul spends so much time on the promise by grace versus the law. The law has specific purses to reveal man's sin, to show what's going on with him. And so that's the big divide there. Okay. So now Paul, in this verse, he starts out, is the law contrary?

That's the first thing he asks, and the answer is no. And then he goes on to the second part, if a law, and notice here, I'm getting ahead of myself, for if a law had been given, which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. So let's just take it one part at a time, but for if a law had been given, so he's going to propose an impossible situation. He's going to say, Think about this, if you could, and he has, notice here that it's a law, not the law. So he's going to say, if you could come up with, and this is what we do, this is what I did. Well, see, my law was I'm going to be a good person. That was my law, right? I'm going to be a good person and God's going to have to accept that.

Well, that can't provide my salvation. It's impossible. That can't, it can't possibly work. was able to impart life or able to give life. Can keeping the law give us life? It cannot. Either the mosaic law or any law, like the law I created about myself, that couldn't keep life. That couldn't give me salvation. The scripture says, it is the spirit who gives life. Or it says, let's see, or makes alive, makes alive. The flesh profits nothing. The word that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

Then righteousness would indeed be based on the law. So if you could come up with that, then you would have a system. But that's going to violate something else, and we need to move down the road here. Again, it cannot be the case. You cannot come up with a law, either of your own making or the Mosaic law.

Galatians 2 21 I do not nullify the grace of God For if righteousness comes through the law then Christ died needlessly Just just that we talked about verse this morning a little bit Sunday school Think about that if I can make up a law my own law my own goodness before God or if there if some part of the Mosaic law could do that then why did Christ die and And we know that Christ had to die. He had to die for the sins of the world. So what Paul's coming down here is that the law is tremendously important. It's holy, it's righteous, it's just.

But it's not to control men. It's to spotlight them, to highlight their need for a Savior. That's what it's all about. And then Macaulay has something here, the whole idea of the conflict between the two is abhorrent because it suggests that the conflict of God's character, who is the author of both the law and the promise, the law however is unable to impart life, it cannot save. So when we come to understand what the purpose of the law is, that is to spotlight sin, is to show us sin, and the purpose of the promise, is for us to accept the Lord by faith, they don't conflict. They're in harmony.

So I'd just like to... I finished way too early here today. So a couple of final thoughts here, and then I want to give you a preview of next week a little bit. You know, how do we measure, and we talk about this in Sunday School a bit now and then, how do we measure our Christian life? How do we measure that?

Now, if you're a law person, hey, this is okay. You check, you know, I checked that one. Oh, it did pretty good in that one. Oh, not so good in that one. So you'll go through, if you're a law person, you're going to go through. I'm going to check my Christian by doing good according to all these laws. Some my own laws possibly, some God's laws from the, you know, 633. You'll judge it by that. But that's not how God... How is God judging our Christian life? How does He judge us? Doesn't He judge us in His Son?

Isn't that the wonderful part? We're not judged in ourselves. In ourselves, we are condemned. But there's now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. So He's not condemning us. He's blessing us. And isn't the fact that It's our relationship with Him, what we know about Him, how we understand what He's done. It's a relationship. It's a relationship between ourselves and our Saviors, that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering. Knowing Him, that's a measure.

How do I measure that? I measure that by the time I spend with Him. Now, you can get off on a metric there, too. You can say, well, OK, I got four hours last week and only two this week. Oh, no, no, it's slipping there. No, I think it's a more day-by-day, moment-by-moment, as we understand what God has done on our behalf, we come to understand what we call our position, who we are in Christ. We understand that. And we understand how He would have us walk by faith with Him. And that's a lifelong process. A lifelong process where we walk by faith in what He's done and what He has us do. That's how we measure. It's just like, how do you measure your relationship with your wife or with your children?

Do you get out and say, okay, do you tell your wife, well, good job, you know, laundry done, dishes done, you know, do you do that? Some may do that. I would suggest that probably is not going to be too helpful in the marriage. Better, isn't it better when you say, I'm not good at this. Can I help out with that? I'm not always that great, but I'm learning.

Another 40 or so years, I'll be able to learn some more. It's a relationship, and you care about one another. And that's the whole thing about the Christian life. God cares about us, and He wants us to interact with Him and believe what He says. OK, there's more I can say, but let's just think about I don't have an overhead for this. Let's think about the coming verses here. And they're pretty cool. Jim read just so we're going to come to the section next week. I'll just read the three verses we're going to cover next week.

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, which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ.

So there's a couple of cool words in here that are translated shut up and kept in custody. And they speak about a jailer. So there's this picture, this word picture about that actually we're in custody. We're in custody in a couple of different ways. One by the scriptures, one by the law, and we're going to understand that, try to sort that out. And then the last one is a very familiar one.

He's become our tutor to lead us to Christ. You know, I've had different ideas about tutor and studying for this, I came across, I'll just share that and we'll close. A tutor in the Greek culture actually was a slave. You know, one time I thought it was a tutor. It sounds like it's a professor. I'm going to get tutored in English or math or whatever. I got this and he's a gray-haired professor or maybe he's a student at a college, a well-educated person. Well, a tutor in that time period was actually a slave. So when it says, so this is interesting is it's this tutor is actually a slave and there's this, Macaulay shared this in part of his writings.

There's a dialogue about in Greek literature about talking to a young boy and they ask him about his tutor or his, I can't, I'm a whole lot of pronouncing the word until I said it. Better not, better not. Okay. The tutor is a certain Greek word. And the boy says, someone asked him, you have a tutor? And he says, yes. And he says, what, what does your tutor do? And he says, well, he takes me to, he basically takes me to school. He takes me to and from school, make sure I get to school and I get back from school. That's his job. And they say, well, who is this tutor? And he says, well, he's a slave. And they said, he's a slave? Aren't you a little concerned that he's, you know? No, that's what he's supposed to do.

Take me to school and take him back. So we're going to learn more about that. And actually, I think when you drill down the meaning of the word tutor, it helps out. So it says that the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ. So I kind of changed my view on the tutor from being a gray-haired professor or whatever to, no, there's this person that's been hired by the family to take you from this place to that place.

So there's something to think about there. Okay, hopefully not and then we then the shut-up part being in jail Okay, what think about that? Okay. Well, let's close. We thank you father. We thank you for this day Lord Thank you for the blessings. We have father or we thank you for the law. You've given us Lord and you know it What people have struggled over that and then there's so much Has been said and written and so many document. It's just a I But you very simply tell us it's for the purpose of showing us our sins, revealing our sin nature, showing us a need for a Savior. Help us to believe that and to walk in that truth. In Christ's name, Amen.