Christ has Born the Curse of the Law

Well today, I'd like to read, kind of go back. I was kind of looking at where we are in Galatians. We're up to verse 13 today. And I was looking, I think it would be wise to kind of start back and read, I was kind of looking at, you know, Galatians chapter three has a tremendous amount to say about Abraham. I looked back, I did a little search on my computer and verses 6-18 have something to say about Abraham, and there's one other place in Galatians that talks about Abraham. So I thought it would be good to kind of read, and this is going to give us some wonderful additional information about what God has done through Abraham. But let's kind of go back, if I could get a volunteer to read, starting in verse 6 of Galatians, verse 6-16. About 10 verses there, if they could be willing to read that. I was giving out gold stars. Well, read it. I hope you can hear me. My voice isn't as loud as yours.

Even as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, know ye therefore that they who are of faith the same are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then, they who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone that which are written in the book of the law, to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident, for the just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them.

Is that what you wanted? I want to go down to 16. and cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Brethren, I speak after the manner of men. Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man annulleth or addeth to it. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. Thanks, Roy. That's great. OK, so we're going to look at these four verses here today. And if you notice, we started back with Abraham.

And if you notice, kind of sprinkle through all those verses is, of faith or by faith, There's a real contrast in all these verses between approaching God by faith or by the law. And as we've seen through all those verses that were read, and these verses as well, the law is not sufficient to obtain God's blessing, not sufficient to know God, to be saved.

The law can only basically curse you. And that's kind of a stark contrast. But I think there's a balancing point. I'm really thankful that I've been able to look through Hal's notes and he had a neat balancing point about it. Well, Hal, what's the curse of the law? We're going to look at that. What is the curse of the law?

So we're going to kind of start into it and kind of go through that. That's one of the key points, I think, today. And then talking about being Abraham's seed. What's that all about? So let's go on here. So the first verse here is 13. The first part of the first verse is that Christ redeemed us.

And this word redeemed, there's kind of a collection of words in the New Testament that talk about redeemed and kind of the word for redeemed here is The core word is agaradzo. I think I'm pronouncing it agaradzo, to buy. And then this word is an intensive form of that, ex-agaradzo, which is to buy out of. So I looked in Mike Webster, and the word redeemed is to regain possession of by paying of a specified sum of money.

And in our case, it's to buy out with the idea of, of paying the price, especially for a slave, is kind of in view in New Testament times. So, in a sense, Christ, we were slaves of sin, and Christ bought us out of the marketplace of sin. He purchased us. And actually there are several verses, we haven't gotten to this verse yet, but in Galatians 4 verse 5 it says, in order that he might redeem those who were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons. So very similar, in fact almost a parallel verse to this verse, redeeming us from those who are under the law.

And then in 1 Corinthians, can I get someone to read 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 20? For you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body. Thanks buddy. So that word bought is the same core word, ex-agorazo, to redeem, to buy out of. So we were bought out of this bondage, bought out of this bondage.

And actually at the end of the handout, I have a, the very last page that I passed out, there's a tabulation I did back in 2004 for the for another class. I'm trying to think what the class is. It's the one that I'm actually doing now. Well, that's Summary of God's Redemption. Right. And that took all the verses about redemption. and there are a few other ones. There's the Neutro series. And one thing I like to do is actually put the verses that they come from. So it's the back of the last page. So that's kind of a more extensive and kind of just putting it in phrases from scripture there. So hopefully that's helpful.

And then actually in the Corinthians passage, very similar to the other one, that we've been bought with a price, we've been purchased with a price. The price was a precious blood of the Lord Jesus. So that's the starting point of this, actually 13 and 14, that Christ redeemed us. He purchased us.

And that list has many other things, but one of the key things is from the curse of the law. So we're going to kind of go into that now. From the curse of the law, and I think it's important to they get a good definition. You can look in Vines and other places and you'll see that curse is kind of the idea that I found it a little inadequate and actually I found Hal's definition in his notes the best definition I came across. So I like to use that one.

And actually the word which in the Greek is K-A-T-A-R-A actually comes from the Hebrew word which is A-R-A-R, however you pronounce that. But it's the idea to bind, like you're prevented from something. But the key part is to ban something, to ban someone from enjoying something. And it's the opposite of blessing. In the Old Testament, you had the blessings and the curses. On Mount Ebal, they had that, that was kind of a, in terms of Israel, So the curse can be thought of as that we are banned or prevented from enjoying something.

And I think that actually you can kind of see that in actually one of the first couple places in the Bible that talks about curses. And this is right after the fall. And let's just look at those in Genesis 3. Genesis chapter 3. And again, if I could get someone to read Actually, I wouldn't mind reading, yeah, 14 through, um, yeah, 14 through 17. I think that'll be fine. 14 through 17.

So the Lord said to the serpent, because you have done this, first are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. To the woman, he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing. With pain, you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. To Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life. OK. With this definition from Hal in mind, And you kind of look at this and you say, well, I see what's going on here. It says basically that there's going to be, in terms of man, the fruit of the land isn't going to come easily. You're prevented, in a sense, from enjoying the land fully because you're going to have to really work hard. Part of the curse is you're working very hard to obtain something out of the ground. And then back here in terms of the serpent, you know, he's going to have to crawl, you know, he's going to...

It's interesting, I had noticed this before. It says, cursed are you more than all the cattle. That implies that cattle are cursed too, and I guess, you know, I don't know. It's kind of an interesting thing. Cursed are you more than all the cattle and any beast of the field. So basically the serpent, you know, he was prevented from from enjoying or appreciating God's creation. He had to suffer because of that. So that's kind of at the core, I think, of the idea of curse.

And then we get to the next chart, the curse of the law. I think it really helps us to see what's going on there. So any thoughts or questions on this chart? Kind of just two things, the redemption Christ's redemption for us, and we have the definition of the curse, and we're going to build on that and go to the next part here. So let's just go on here. So my question is, you've probably looked ahead if you have. So what is the curse of the law? And you can just give them your own words, or if you have a... Death? OK. OK. All right. OK. Certainly, certainly a person. OK. All right. So let's just go ahead. Look at that.

So the curse of the law. Actually, this comes from Howell in December of 1996, basically. Basically, using that definition, we are banned from enjoying what is behind the law, the source of the law, what the law represents. And here's a little picture that Hal drew. I'm not sure I tried to reproduce it well. And I thought this was really good. If you look here, here you have man under law, the man under law system.

He works and what happens is he can't, according to Galatians chapter 3 in verse 8, He just can't keep some of the laws. He can't just do 90%. Like our kids in school, like Ryan had to get a certain percentage to pass, right? Well, he just can't get some.

He has to get every single law right. Otherwise, he's cursed. So the law, and the source of the law is wonderful. You know, you look in Romans there, it's holy, righteous, and just. It's wonderful, but the thing is, man is asked to keep all of it, to do all of it, and he's cursed if he's not. So I think, you know, it really helps. So the person wants to experience the source, which is God's holy, righteous, and justice, but he can't, because the law says you have to do all these things, otherwise you can't, you know, And no man can do it. There's only one man that ever kept the inhale. It was Jesus Christ.

So I mean, this picture really helped me. And then Hal had another picture, which I didn't put on here. And it's a picture under grace. And I'll try to draw that here. You have to help me here. Any spelling errors, you can... I don't think we have any chalk either probably, but never mind. Oh, there we go. So actually, it's a very similar picture to that. So we got the man. So now, this is the man under the law. Here's the man under grace. And the box here. So what's inside this box, do you think? We have Law here. So what's inside this box here?

Grace. Great. So how do we obtain Grace? What goes in this up here? Thanks. Guys are going to get 100% here. What comes out of there? Blessings. Yes, well done. Okay, and basically with blessing, we get to experience the holiness of God. All that lists there, holy, just, or righteous, and good. So which would you rather be under? You'd rather be under this one? Or you'd rather be under this one? I think I need to ask which one. So I thought it really helped to kind of put the contrast.

The source of the law is wonderful, but it's the law only can, because man is a fallen being, he is not able to interact with God's law with any success. He can't do it. He can do the percentage deal, maybe. Now like, was it Bob that said he was on this flight from Australia with this Jewish gentleman and he claimed he kept all the law. Probably not. I don't think so.

So this is why grace is so wonderful. It's God's grace that gives us Through our faith, we have blessing, not this picture here. And what's wonderful here is we're going to see Christ, this is the definition of the curse of the law, and we're going to move on here. And actually, I didn't get the last part that Hal said. A man under law is a slave to the curse, banishment. Banishment from sharing and enjoying the very essence of God. So I think that this kind of helps you know, put the law in perspective.

The source of the law is wonderful, but it's just that we cannot, because we have a holy God, we cannot live up in ourselves up to that standard. It's impossible. This standard, by faith in what God has done, this is the mode that we want to operate under. Okay, so let's go on here. And how is that accomplished? How was this picture accomplished?

Because Christ, having become a curse for us, He took our place. He became a curse. He was, in using the idea that we talked about here of being banned, wasn't Christ banned or prevented while on the cross from His Father? He was separated. We talked about that death of separation. He was separated from His Father. So that definition kind of holds up. of being, he was banned or prevented while on the cross from experiencing that relationship he had for all eternity with his father.

Having become, is this word, genomai, to come into a new state of being, Christ being sinless, never, never experienced sin, never sinned, but he became, and actually I didn't, let's go back here, actually somehow in my, let's look at 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 21. I think you guys all know this verse, but this kind of describes the process here. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21.

It says, He made Him, Christ, who knew no sin, Christ didn't experience sin, to be sin on our behalf. that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. So Christ became sin. He became a curse for us. And that allowed the relationship to change between the holy God and man.

And then the verse kind of goes on. It says, for because it is written, and that's in the perfect tense, it's the idea that it's a fact, indicative mood, and it's passive. A past completed action, it was written in past time, but it still was true up until the time of scripture and on, that a person, as the verse says, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And that's a quote out of the Old Testament in Deuteronomy. And let's just look at that for a second. And Deuteronomy, and that's just kind of a fact, if you will.

It is a fact that God, it was cursed for a person to hang on a tree. And so what did our Savior do? He hung on a tree. He became a curse for us. Deuteronomy 21. Can I get someone to read verses 22 and 23? If a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day. For he who is hanged is accursed of God, so that you do not defile your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

Right. Thanks Cheryl. Yeah, so it's interesting. It says if a man has committed a sin worthy of death. So you think, wow. So Christ, did Christ commit a sin worthy of death? This is kind of a trick question. We did. We certainly did. And so basically, he became sin for us. So in that sense, because we did and he took our place, then he fits this definition here.

So it's kind of a trick question. I noticed that Hal in his notes had a bunch of, It's kind of fun to walk through that. Different weeks go by and questions are answered and it's kind of fun. That was one of his questions. He went through it quite a long time. A lot of you folks probably experienced that.

That's pretty much verse 13. Any last thoughts on 13? 14 is going to give us the results of Christ Becoming a curse, redeeming us, becoming a curse for us. So what's the benefits of Christ doing that? What purpose was that? And 14 is going to kind of explain that. Okay, no questions, we'll just... I'll ask you a question. It may be irrelevant. Okay, an irrelevant question, all right.

What about Peter? What about Peter? Okay, okay, so you're saying he was hung on a cross, right? Okay, all right. All right, so he was, okay. So you wonder, how does that fit in with this definition? We just read that right here. How does that fit in with that? Right, so. If they were left hanging on the tree after the sundown. There was something about that. Yeah, that's true. Actually it says in here that they're not to be, that's not to happen. Yeah. They were stoned and then hung on the tree. Well, okay. Well, first of all, do we have to work, okay, let's say, let's say any of us, let's say if I die today and for some reason they hang me on a cross, I mean, I don't know. Who knows why? Anyway, and somebody doesn't like me.

Does that, you know, does that affect in any way, I mean, for the believer, it doesn't, you know, Christ is already hung on the cross in our place, right? He's already faked, so it's a non-issue. And that's what you're looking for, that's excellent, that's a good point. So we don't have to worry, well, wait a minute, what happens if they hang me on a cross after I'm dead? Do I, am I cursed? Is that, you know, am I banished from being with God? No, that's already, Christ has already taken our place, and it's already done. That's good, Doug, that's good. You want us to think here. It's always good to think. Especially when you're not awake sometimes. Okay, which is me, a lot of the time. Okay, good, all right, excellent. Okay, so let's go on.

Let's look at the, so in this verse we have, you know, it's something in the English, whenever you see, in order that, or so that. So we actually have, in this verse, the purpose for what Christ has done. So the first purpose is started or denoted by, in order that, or with a purpose that, in or through Christ. So it's in Christ that these, you know, you can't obtain these things outside of Christ.

And he is the source of blessing and promise. that we might receive the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. So, before we go any further, what is the blessing of Abraham that comes to the Gentiles? What is that? It would be Christ. Okay, okay, that's good. Alright, so what happened to Abraham when when God came to him. And remember, he sacrificed Isaac. I think that's the passage. What happened to Abraham after he... Well, what did God say to Abraham? Actually, we can look at it. I'll keep you in suspense here. I think it's in... Actually, I didn't write... Okay, let's look at Genesis 15. So, Vonnie, I'll let you read the answer. Okay, starting verse 1. How about 1 through 5 in Genesis 15?

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram. I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me? Since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, Since you have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir. Then, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body. He shall be your heir. And he took him outside and said, Now look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be.

And he believed in the Lord and he reckoned to him as righteousness. Okay. Actually, this wasn't exactly the passage, but the point is, what happened to Abraham, right? Because he believed, right? In verse 6, he believed the Lord and he was reckoned to him as righteousness. So by faith, just like we are, Abraham believed in God and it was a coward to him as righteousness. And the source of that is Jesus Christ. And it says, we just read it in Galatians there, that the gospel was preached to Abraham.

If you look back in Galatians, if you have your finger there, it says, Yeah, in verse 8, Galatians 3.8, the scriptures foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, what we're talking about here, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, all nations will be blessed in you.

So like you said, I think you said, Bonnie, it's Christ. The blessing of Abraham is that by faith in the gospel and the good news, or ultimately in Jesus Christ, that's the blessing of Abraham. And through that blessing, we are made righteous. We are justified by faith. So I believe that's what the Basically it's grace shown, the blessing, and it's actually singular here, the blessing of Abraham, grace shown by God to Abraham, and actually this is what I just read. The scriptures foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying all nations will be blessed by you. Blessed in you, I'm sorry. So that's the first purpose. The first purpose of Christ becoming a curse for us was that the Gentiles, which includes us, might come to faith in Christ Jesus, as he did, as Abraham did. So that's the first one.

The second one, so there's an in order that and a so that. we would receive, this is to receive something that is given, the promise of the Spirit through faith. And this one, you know, there's really no mention in the accounts in Genesis about the Holy Spirit. So this is something that the believer in the dispensation of grace in the church age, this is something the Spirit in the Old Testament kind of came and went for a particular purpose. But the second purpose is specific to the church age believer. And the promise is a gift graciously bestowed, God's grace. And the promise of the Spirit, there are several passages that talk about the promise of the Spirit. And we can look at some of those.

In John chapter 14, And this is when the Lord was going to go to the cross, and he kind of talks about what's going to happen when he's not there. And in chapter 14, and it's going down to something in verse 17 here, 16, it says, So basically, if you go back to the context here, he was talking with Philip, and Philip said, show us the Father, so the Lord kind of goes through and talks about himself and the relationship with the Father, and then he comes down to verse 16 in chapter 14, he says, I will ask the Father, and I will give you another Helper, that he may be with you forever, that is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not Behold him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. And then down to 26.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. So Christ, this is a promise of the Holy Spirit to come and do what Christ has said. And it actually gets more additional information over in chapter 16 of John. It talks about his ministry.

It says, verse 5, But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you ask me, where are you going? Because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth. This is really cool. It is to your advantage that I go away. I'm not sure they really saw that. For if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you. But if I go, I will send the Helper to you.

And when he comes, and here's a wonderful ministry of the Holy Spirit. This is a ministry to unbelievers here. He will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. Concerning sin, because they do not believe in me. Concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father. And you no longer behold me. And concerning judgment, because the rule of this world has been judged.

And that goes on. The part that I like here, starting in verse 13, But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine and disclose it to you. all things that the Father has are mine. Therefore, I said, he takes of mine and discloses it to you."

So the role of the Holy Spirit is not focused on the Holy Spirit. It's focused on Christ. He's taking all the wonderful things of Christ and showing it to us. It's interesting that in Galatians, he kind of merges, if you will, in this verse, he merges the blessings of Abraham and then he has the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit wasn't in view in the Old Testament. But obviously for the believer in the church age, it is both for Jew and Gentile. Go ahead, Tom. It's not like the Holy Spirit is just a plain newspaper. He takes the things and makes them real personally to the believers. Absolutely.

Well, I like the wonderful thing is we always wonder how to pray for someone. I prayed this morning. Well, how do I pray for that person? passage in Romans where he, you know, in a sense, he makes our prayers acceptable to God. And we may pray the wrong thing, but the Lord knows our heart.

He says, you know, it's like praying for your children. You know, you pray everything for your children. I mean, it probably isn't an aspect of life you haven't prayed for. And maybe you're praying, maybe you're too concerned, you shouldn't be concerned. You should be trusting. But the Holy Spirit's job is to do that. He knows our heart. He takes our prayers and brings them before God, and that's wonderful. And we trust that He's doing that.

So basically 13 and 14 are kind of a pair. So now let's go on to the next pair, kind of interesting. So now he's going to talk about this. He says in verse 15, Brethren, I speak in terms of human relationships, even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. So let's just look at this. So basically, brethren, he's talking to brothers in the Lord. He says, I speak in terms or according to human relationships.

You know, he's saying this is the way men conduct themselves. So here's a, so man's covenant, so man's covenant is you have party one and party two. Actually, we don't have Donna here today, she's with, they're off, but in Mike's and probably in Courtney's thing too, you have party one and party two.

They make an agreement, they have a contract. You buy a house, you do anything, you have a contract and you agree and so there are parts of that contract. The first part is you ratify it. So how do you ratify a contract? How do you do that today? Signs the paper. Signs the paper, right. I sign, sometimes you both sign, right? I sign that I agree to the terms and conditions and maybe the buyer and seller, if you're doing a house, they sign. And so that ratifies, that makes it valid, right? That's part one. So that was the first part. So he's talking about, he's going to set the stage for the next verse here. So that's part one. Part two is no one sets it aside.

And that is to make void, to render it null, of no value. After it's signed, you don't get to say, oh, well, hey, shucks. What I really meant was I wanted my lawn to be mowed every week for part of this deal. No, that's not in the contract. I'm sorry. You don't get your lawn mowed every week as part of this deal.

Now sometimes we can go back and for more money you can probably get anything else done you want. But the original terms you have to abide by. You can't say no I'm not going to do that or I'm going to add more. Actually I'm getting ahead of myself here. Well you can't add to it or delete unless you want to. Well actually I was getting to the third point. I was trying to separate that. I'm sorry. You can't set aside something that's in there and say no I don't want to do that part. I assigned I was going to do it.

I was going to give you X amount of money, I want to give you half that amount of money. You can't do that. You have to give the full amount of money. And then you can't add conditions. Oh, by the way, that's my lawn mowing thing in there. I've got to help myself here. Make additional conditions. Oh, I want my lawn mowed as part of the seal.

So there's like ABCs of a man's covenant. So that's kind of verse 15. So this is how man does things. OK, so now we're going to look at Okay, and I found this verse, this is not an easy verse, you have to kind of like, I probably spent more time on this, I got less charts and more time on this verse and I'm not sure I, anyway.

Okay, it says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Now, you think, well we just talked about a covenant, now we're talking about a promise. So I, Here's a little, I made use of Hal's notes again here, which I thought were good. So here, in terms of God making an agreement or a covenant, you have God, party one, he makes a covenant, like a covenant with Abraham.

If he's the only one doing it, and Abraham, what was Abraham's part? It was by faith, but that doesn't, faith doesn't count as a, It's non-meritorious. Actually, in some cases, God said, I'm just going to do this, Abraham. This is how it's going to be. So when God is the sole party, it's only one party, it's really a promise. God is making a promise to Abraham, right?

And I think that's why it says, now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. And it's kind of important here to look at seed with no S and seeds with an S. So that's going to be important. Okay, so the promises were spoken to his seed, singular.

Okay, so let's look at this verse here. Actually, let's turn to this verse, because actually I want to look at both the singular, and this was I had a challenging time trying to figure out, I looked at different things trying to see if I could see singular and plural in the Hebrew and I, I don't know, I didn't do real well. So I just, I took the, what others had said and said, okay, it's nice to be able to, you know, when you guys study, I like to be able to look and say, okay, if somebody says that's a plural or singular, that verb is this, I like to look and be able to verify that. Well, sometimes I, in this case I couldn't, I couldn't exactly do that, but it certainly seemed like that's what was the case. So anyway, I was a little disappointed that I couldn't do that. So let's look at Genesis 22 and verse 16. Now let's start back at 15.

Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven. And this is a case after Isaac where Abraham was obedient to God and was ready to salute his son Isaac. Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, By myself I have sworn. So here it is. God is doing this by himself.

He's not asking Abraham to declares the Lord, because you have done this thing, exercise faith basically, and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and the sands which are on the seashore and your seed shall possess the gates of your enemies. And then 18, in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice." So I'm kind of curious, does someone have like a King James Version?

Is there any difference? Are all the seeds singular in there or are some plural and some singular? Some singular. I just see on mine they're all singular. But what's interesting is Then I have footnotes that say in 17 it says descendants, plural. And then other notes I have in 18 it says that's singular, which actually makes sense in the context here because the singular blessing is Jesus Christ.

That's a singular blessing through Abraham that accrues to all the nations in 18. And in your seed, singular I believe, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. So that's Jesus Christ's belief and faith in Jesus Christ. Whereas back in 17, he talks about here are blessings that are for Israel basically.

Abraham, I will greatly multiply your seed has to start, maybe singular is okay, and the sands which are on the seashore, and your seed, I think that one should be plural I think, and your seed shall possess the gates of your enemy. I don't know, I struggle with... He's talking about both from his body, his seed, and the results of it. And I think maybe you're right, maybe that's what it is, maybe I get confused with myself here. plural but a singular, right? Yes. Seed from your body. I think you're right. I'm not sure. Yeah, I think you're right.

Well, I was looking to try to get my singular, because he has, he's going to go on to say here, he's going to make a distinction, he's going to say, let's go on here, he's going to say, well, what I'm talking about here, he does, here's what he says, he does not say seeds, plural, as referring to many, and I believe seeds are here, Abraham's physical seed, Israel, but rather one seed, and seed is implied, it seems like, but rather one, he does say, and to your seed that is, or who is, Christ, or a better translation might be, and to the seed of you who is Christ. So he's trying to distinguish between the blessings that just were for Israel and the blessings that were for us, for all the nations. And he's trying to make a distinction there between that.

So, I found this a little bit tedious. Okay, so if I thoroughly confuse you with seeds and seeds and more seeds. Okay, and actually that's the last verse. I didn't have a real good finale here, I'm sorry. Okay, and actually what I thought was interesting.

Let's look at one last verse here before we Just kind of focusing on on Christ and Abraham and how how significant that was What Christ said about Abraham I thought was interesting in John chapter 8 John chapter 8 and verse 56 Can I save your voice and say it? Sure, go ahead. Here we go. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Right. Kind of a short verse, but I thought it was interesting. He's talking to these people, and they're giving them a hard time.

And Abraham is the patriarch of the nation of Israel, so he says, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, Remember we said that the gospel was preached to Abraham? We aren't giving details here, but Abraham, I don't know, it's incredible. He seemed to, you know, he said, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Now you could argue maybe that's, Abraham was in heaven.

I don't know. I don't know. Whatever. But it's very interesting. you know, Abraham is, you know, the blessings that Abraham got, some were localized for the nation of Israel, and then the one concerning salvation through Christ was something that, that blessing was then, as we saw, was made available to the Gentiles, to us. Any last thoughts or comments? Interesting version of Genesis. the Jewish nation shall be as the sand in the sea.

Right. Iran doesn't understand that. That's a good point. Iran today, of course, their goal is to eliminate, to kill all the Jews. Right. Eliminate and take over Israel. Right. Yeah. So we know right there he's not going to do it. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing is... Bring it right to date. Exactly.

The other thing is it's just so astounding how how hated Israel is. It makes no sense. There's no logic there. Well, there's logic there if that is God's chosen... It's basically against God. When they say I'm against Israel, they're basically against God.

As we see in our country too, righteousness is not applauded. People are doing what's right. The righteous man is not applauded. Which is so hard, and you think, well, we're a country that is truthful and stuff. But how come righteousness is not applauded? How come unrighteousness is applauded?

It's all mixed up, and it is mixed up, because this is a fallen world. And I always thought sometimes it's amazing as many good things happen as they do. Because if you think of this world controlled by the prince and power of the air, why wouldn't it just be bad all the time?

I guess it's whatever God allows. Yeah. And also because we have people who know God, who are righteous, and they do right things in accordance with Him. So, anyway. and the Holy Spirit remains in the background even outside the life of those who have not quite accepted God as anything. We just read that. To do good even if they don't realize it. And the ministry of the Holy Spirit is still in force in our world today, even in a fallen world.

So that's a wonderful influence for good. is the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven. Could we tie that to reality in the nation of Israel and also the church as heavenly people? Some thoughts along those lines occurred to me that may be in our Lord's mind when he talked to Abraham about blessing his sea. But this passage here says we have been included as his children, Abraham's children. As the stars of heaven. I'm just using the metaphor that the scripture gives. Metaphors always stand for reality.

Thank you. We'll close here. We thank you, Father. We thank you for this day, Lord. We thank you for your word and for the blessings we have, Lord. Thank you that you have provided all things, Lord. You provided your spirit to guide us in the truth and you provided the blessings of Abraham that had proceeded all through the Lord Jesus Christ. We're thankful for that. We ask it in his name. Amen.