Participants: Mark Howard & Jim Howard
Series Code: GBOTB
Program Code: GBOTB00007B
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00:06 Welcome back to Books of the Book we have been studying
00:08 the book of Galatians and we are talking today about 00:11 the Seed of Abraham and we left off at the break 00:14 talking about the Seed not being Isaac but being Christ. 00:17 Jim I think we were going to pick up right there. 00:21 Yes, verse 16 of Galatians 3 we read where it says, 00:24 "now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. 00:28 "He does not say, And to seeds, as of many, 00:30 "but as of one, 'And to your Seed', who is Christ. " 00:34 We made the point that the Seed is not Isaac, the Seed 00:38 it's not the lineage, the Jewish heritage as it were. 00:42 The Seed is not that which circumcision brings you into 00:46 connection with, but rather the Seed is Christ. 00:49 They were connected to Isaac, but if they weren't connected 00:52 to Christ they weren't going to be recipients of the promise. 00:56 This verse right here, if you look in your Bible there is 00:59 quotations around it because he is actually quoting from 01:03 the book of Genesis. 01:04 That's right and I think it is important for us to note 01:08 we miss a lot when we fail to realize or we forget that 01:13 all of the New Testament writers taught 01:15 from the Old Testament. 01:17 They preach the gospel from the Old Testament. 01:20 The Bible Jesus used was the Old Testament Scriptures. 01:23 Sometimes people get the idea that the Old Testament is 01:26 not gospel centered, we only stick with the New Testament. 01:30 But Jesus Himself told the disciples on the road to Emmaus 01:33 who didn't basically receive all that the prophets 01:37 had wrote or spoken. 01:39 He said you fools and slow of heart to believe all that 01:42 the prophets have spoken. 01:43 So Jesus said your foolish if you are not taking in what's 01:47 written in the Old Testament because that is the 01:49 foundation, that gives you the background of a lot of what 01:52 is being taught in the New Testament. 01:54 The apostle Paul well understood the Old Testament Scriptures. 01:56 That is what he was using so when he is writing and 02:01 quoting it is important for us to go back and find out 02:05 what the setting was, what the message was, 02:08 what the story was that he was quoting from and it will 02:12 fill out the picture for us and give us the real context 02:15 of what is being communicated. 02:17 That's right, if you look at this particular situation 02:20 we do learn something very significant by going back 02:23 to where he is quoting from. 02:25 It is in Genesis 22:18 it says, "in your seed" and again 02:31 it is the singular seed and that is what Paul is saying. 02:36 Not seeds but seed, "in your seed all the nations of the 02:41 "earth shall be blessed, because 02:44 you have obeyed My voice. " 02:47 Now I find that fascinating, it says that Abraham 02:50 received this inheritance by promise and we think it's 02:55 the promise of faith and not obedience, not anything 02:59 to do with the law, it is just faith, but yet you go 03:03 back to the exact place where God makes that promise and 03:07 it says the reason I am giving you this promise is 03:10 because you have obeyed My voice. 03:12 It only makes sense because true obedience, the kind that 03:15 has the Spirit of Christ with it is an obedience 03:19 that stems from faith. 03:21 Abraham had that faith that obeyed. 03:24 That's right in so we went through some of this before. 03:28 So we are going to go to Galatians 3:19 and continue on 03:33 where it says, "what purpose then does the law serve? 03:37 "It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed 03:40 "should come to whom the promise was made; and it was 03:44 "appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. " 03:48 So Paul was just making the point here that the purpose 03:52 the law was given was not to cancel out that promise. 03:55 It wasn't contradictory to the promise, it actually was 03:58 working in conjunction with the promise. 04:00 The commandment was to help bring the people to 04:03 a realization of their transgression because they have 04:06 forgotten their true condition and they have forgotten 04:09 their need of the righteousness outside of themselves. 04:12 That's right and it picks up really clearly on that in 04:14 verse 23 and we have already been through these verses. 04:17 It is the foundation for where we are headed. 04:20 In verse 23 it says, "but before faith came, we were 04:22 "kept under guard by the law, For the faith which would 04:26 "afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor 04:29 "to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified 04:32 "by faith. But after faith has come, 04:35 we are no longer under a tutor. " 04:36 So again the law was serving as that tutor that was 04:40 showing us that we were outside the will of God. 04:43 Showing us that being outside of the will of God gave us 04:46 a certain penalty of death and giving us motivation 04:50 to go to Christ to find what we needed. 04:53 That something we needed was through faith the promise 04:57 of the Spirit, we read that in verse 14 of chapter 3. 05:01 You receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 05:05 So through faith we are born of the Spirit, born-again. 05:09 This is a significant point and what it means is that 05:12 the Spirit of God writes His law on our hearts. 05:16 Then it says no longer do we need a tutor. 05:19 In other words, once the Spirit of God comes in we don't 05:24 need someone to say don't commit adultery. 05:27 We are not going to want to commit adultery. 05:30 - that's right. We don't need to say be sure and keep 05:34 the Sabbath, we're going to desire to do God's will 05:37 and to keep the Sabbath. 05:38 No longer is the wall serving in that purpose. 05:41 We have now come to a point where we agree with God 05:44 and because of that in verse 26 it makes this beautiful 05:48 statement, "for you are all sons of God through faith in 05:51 "Christ Jesus. " We become sons through faith. 05:55 That seed experience of being a part of the family of 05:58 Abraham happens through faith. 06:01 So what we need to grasp about that, that is when we are 06:03 talking about the seed and our viewers may not be grasping 06:05 the terms, some Bibles will say descendents. 06:09 The whole idea is this, the Jewish nation under stood 06:12 that through the descendent of Abraham that it was through 06:16 Abraham that the whole nation would be blessed. 06:19 They understood that blessing was them. 06:21 Anybody who was born through the line of Abraham. 06:24 Anybody who was a descendent, a literal descendent of 06:27 Abraham even unto this day Jim, there are many Christians 06:30 who understand that the nation of Israel has this special 06:34 place in God's heart because of their natural lineage. 06:38 They don't take into account certain places and things 06:42 for example in the New Testament book of John chapter 8 06:46 Jesus is talking to the religious leaders and He tells 06:50 these Jewish leaders, natural born Jews, if you were 06:54 Abraham's children you would do the works of Abraham. 06:57 If you were Abraham's children? What's that about? 06:59 They were Abraham's children, but the point Jesus was 07:02 making is the point Paul is making right here. 07:05 That the understanding of the Jews was that their 07:08 inheritance was going to be based on being natural born 07:11 descendents of the line of Abraham. 07:15 Whereas, when Paul says Abraham's seed was not his 07:19 descendent, that the promise was made not through not Isaac, 07:24 but long after Isaac's line, Jesus Christ and all who would 07:28 be born of Him instead of born of Isaac. 07:32 I want to look at that real quickly in a couple of 07:36 passages, we are going to go to Romans 5:18, 19. 07:41 Romans 5:18, 19 the Bible says, "therefore, as though one 07:47 "man's offense, judgment came to all men" this is talking about 07:51 Adam, it was Adam's sin that pasted sin onto the human race. 07:55 It goes on to say, "resulting in condemnation, 07:58 "even so through one Man's righteous act. " 08:01 that would be Jesus, "the free gift came 08:05 "to all men, resulting in justification of life. 08:08 "For as by one man's disobedience many were made 08:11 "sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many 08:14 "will be made righteous. " 08:16 So it puts a contrast here between Jesus and Adam. 08:22 We see Paul doing that again in 1 Corinthians 15:22 08:29 it says, "for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all 08:35 "all shall be made alive. " And then in verse 45 it says, 08:39 "and so it is written, the first man Adam became a living 08:44 "being. The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. " 08:48 So here he actually applies this term last Adam to Jesus. 08:51 He is comparing the two and this is what he is saying. 08:54 Just as Adam was the progenitor of the human race. 08:58 We all descended from Adam, in the same way, and because 09:02 we descended from Adam we received what Adam passed on 09:05 to us, the nature of Adam, for fallen nature of sin. 09:09 So in the same way, those who received the nature of the 09:12 second Adam, one who came in Adam's place and lived the 09:16 perfect life that Adam failed to live. 09:19 That last Adam becomes the progenitor of the new race. 09:24 In other words, those who accept Jesus and are born of 09:28 Christ, of His Seed born of the Spirit become a member 09:33 of that Seed, that new family. 09:36 So the problem with the thinking of the Jews of 09:41 Christ's day and Paul's day where he is trying 09:43 to address them, is that their understanding was that 09:47 the blessing came from being born, and as I said many 09:51 Christians today that the blessing came from being born 09:54 of the nation of Israel instead of being born of 09:58 the true Israel, Jesus Christ. 10:01 That was the name that was given to Jacob once 10:03 he became a spiritual man and an overcomer. 10:05 It was a spiritual name that was pointing forward to 10:07 the true Israel, Jesus Christ who is going to be the head 10:10 of a new race and would pass on His nature to humanity 10:14 and then bring them into the family of God. 10:16 Amen, amen and you know when he continues in the book 10:19 of Galatians, he makes that point pretty strongly. 10:23 If we look back and Galatians 3 and I'll pick up in verse 10:27 26 so that we can catch the sense of what he was saying. 10:31 It says, "for you are all sons of God through faith 10:36 "in Christ Jesus. " Not to be honest that was something of 10:41 a heretical statement for Him to be making to them. 10:44 What? All sons of God! They believed that only the 10:47 circumcised were sons of God. 10:49 Only those that were of the direct lineage of Abraham. 10:52 If you weren't of the direct lineage Abraham then you needed 10:54 to be circumcised. - so much so that it didn't even 10:57 matter so much how you lived as long as you were 11:00 circumcised, against circum- cision became a substitute. 11:02 - a substitute for obedience, a substitute for genuine 11:06 faith and so he is making the point no, if you want to be 11:10 part of the family, you have to have the faith of Abraham 11:14 that brings this Spirit thereby being born of Christ. 11:18 Born of the Spirit of God. 11:20 It says in verse 27, "For as many of you as were baptized 11:25 "into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew 11:28 "nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is 11:32 "neither male nor female; for you are all one in 11:35 "Christ Jesus. " Now the part that really stung to some 11:39 was probably that first part. 11:42 There is neither Jew nor Greek. 11:44 I mean here Paul was saying there is no distinction, 11:47 you are all equal heirs to salvation, 11:50 the new birth question and in verse 29 he says, 11:54 "And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, 11:58 "and heirs according to the promise. " 12:01 Isn't that powerful? - It's powerful to me because I'm not 12:04 and natural born descendent of Abraham, but I'm 12:05 a heir of that inheritance. 12:08 And there is another place where it says this and 12:10 I thought it would be valuable for us to look at it 12:13 Because the New Testament is not silent on this point. 12:19 If you look at Romans 2:28 it was either earlier or 12:23 perhaps in our last episode where we were touching on 12:28 verses 25 and 26. 12:29 But in verse 28 it says, "for he is not a Jew who is 12:34 "one outwardly, nor is circum- cision that which is outward 12:38 "in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly and 12:42 "circumcision is that of the heart. In the Spirit not 12:46 "in the letter whose praises not from men but from God. " 12:50 So when you look at this passage is pointing out that 12:54 it's the Spirit ultimately and not the letter that 12:58 makes us children of Abraham. 13:00 So the Spirit here is speaking about inwardly religion 13:03 that finds its way into the letter, into the outside, 13:07 but the letter doesn't always mean you are obeying the 13:10 spirit and so we have this beautiful picture painted for 13:14 us in the book of Galatians that any one of us 13:17 can be a child of Abraham through Christ. 13:20 May God bless you! |
Revised 2014-12-17