Why did Jesus have to be cursed for us to be blessed?
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Adopted, 1 of 3 from May 10, 2026
“Jesus was cursed so that we can be blessed by adoption into God’s family.”
Galatians 3:1-14 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon teaches that believers are adopted into God’s family and counted righteous solely through trusting in Jesus Christ, who became a curse on the cross so that we could receive God’s blessing. Drawing from Galatians 3 and Abraham’s example, Pastor Michael emphasizes that the Holy Spirit’s presence is our “certificate of adoption,” showing that our relationship with God rests on faith in Christ’s finished work rather than on our religious performance or obedience to the law.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 How has our experience of God changed since trusting in Jesus?
💬 How do we see ourselves as part of God’s story?
💬 What does our prayer life tell us about who we trust most?
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Well, good morning, church.
Welcome to our neighbors. I'm glad to be together with you. I just wonder if you've ever had the experience or not. Yeah. Have you ever had the situation where when you learn the history of a place, it changes your experience of that place?
Like, you're in a place and you think you're having this experience. You think you know what it is. You think how it's going, and then you learn the history of the thing, and you go, oh, this is bigger than I thought that it was. I had that experience a couple of. I guess it's been a couple of months ago now for spring break, went up to Tennessee.
And when you go on spring break with kids and you go on spring break with six kids, you are always on the lookout for free things to do. And so one of the things that's free is parks. And the cool thing is they have the same, like, park equipment in every park, but if it's a different park, it counts as a brand new experience. Right. It's one of the benefits of, like, the communities that we live in.
So we were traveling around and we found Little Debbie Park. Right. Are you intrigued? Yeah. And it is what you think it is.
It is a park that is sponsored by Little Debbie. And so there are, like, giant size of the Christmas tree, like, snacks and stuff kind of poking around. It's pretty neat, right? So we'd stop off at Little Debbie park, and we'd. We played a little bit of pickleball with the older kids, and we're kind of waiting around at the little kid playground for them to burn off enough energy for us to call it nap time or something.
I don't know. And as we're doing that, I kind of look over and there's a walking path, and the walking path goes under a bridge. Like, there's a bridge which is like a car bridge. There's cars driving over across it. But then you can see this walking path goes underneath it.
And I don't know know if you're. If guys, if you can relate, but, like, if I see a path under a bridge, I'm like, we have to go explore. Like, where does that path go? What's on the other side of the bridge? Like, you get to walk underneath the cars.
And even better, guys, there was a creek. So, like, there was water involved. Like, oh, I get to walk by the creek. This is just like being a kid again. Like, I get to go and do the thing.
So I took Riley. Were you the one that came with me? Yeah. Riley Came with me, and we went and explored what was on the other side of the bridge. And.
And so we're walking around, and we follow this kind of walking path, and we turn this corner, and it is. There's at least 50. There's got to be at least 50 flag poles in a circle and five flags in the middle. And it is probably the biggest veterans memorial I have ever been to. And I had no idea.
I just wandered in. There is a literal tank in the middle of this circle. There are a little airplane and helicopter in the middle of this circle. I'm like, I thought we were here for Little Debbie park, but it looks like Little Debbie saw some more action. Like, what is happening here?
And so we walk around, and we're looking at stuff, and there's this big plaque in the middle. Like, big. Like, you know, these places have plaques. That's what they do. But this plaque had to have been this big and this tall.
And I was like, that's a big plaque. That must be something special. I gotta go see. And so I went and I read, and there's this whole story about this guy who got drafted into the army, but he said because of his convictions, that he refused to fire a weapon, so he would not carry a gun. They put him on the medical field, and so they sent him into war with no weapon, no way to defend himself.
And what he did with that is he just went and saved people's life. Like, people were shooting, and he's like, my job is to save that guy's life. And so he would just walk out in the middle of the battlefield and grab up wounded people and drag them back so that he could help them get better. And, like, that's what he got known for. Like, it didn't matter who was shooting at what.
He just went out and got people and made it back and even got to the place where, as he was doing that, he got wounded. Somebody came and dragged him off on a stretcher. And as they're dragging him off of the battlefield, he sees somebody else who is more wounded than him, rolls himself off the stretcher and then puts the other guy on and just lays in the middle of the battlefield till they can get back to him. Like, this crazy story. And this Little Debbie park is in the middle of his hometown.
Now, I don't. I haven't watched most movies, so I didn't recognize the name Desmond Doss. And then I discover, oh, most people will recognize that name because there was a big movie about it. And I don't Know anything about the movie? I didn't see it, but, like, apparently this is a thing.
And I'm in this guy's hometown. This is where he grew up. And I had no idea. I literally was just going exploring, and I found all of this adventure and all of this history and my experience of that place and that park was fundamentally different. I walked in and thought, oh, my gosh, there's just so much of this stuff.
And when I read that plaque, then I wanted to read all the other plaques, right? It's like, what else is here? Like, fascinating little park. I'm sure you can Google it and figure out where I was. Cause I don't remember the name of the town.
But, like, there's times where when we discover the history of a thing, it completely changes our experience of a thing. And as we're going to open up a new series today, there's going to be this exchange that's going on and a conversation that probably, to us, is going to feel a little bit confusing. But when we understand the history of what's going on, we'll understand the conversation. And more importantly, we will have a better grasp of our experience of what it means to walk with God. So can we do that together?
All right, good. I don't know what we're going to do if you said no. So let's pray as we start. Can you give me the disciples prayer? My clicker is not clickering.
It's our habit to pray the disciples prayer. So I've got it here up on the screen. And this is just the way that Jesus said, like when he's given instructions on how to pray. This is his synopsis of what prayer sounds like. And I think his goal in doing that isn't that we would now have a magic formula that we could say the right words every time and get the blessings that we want from God.
But his thing is, this is how I want you to pray. This is what I want your heart to sound like when you're talking to God. So as we're doing this, and as we have a regular habit of doing this, I just want to give you some space to make sure that you're checking in with God. We're not just reciting words. Like, we actually are directing our attention and our words to him.
So let's just pause real quick and take a breath.
And let's pray together.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but. But deliver us from evil.
Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Amen. Would you navigate with me to the book of Galatians? We're going to start in chapter three.
It's on page 1122 in these blue Bibles. They're tucked in the chairs around, and you can follow along with me. In fact, I'd encourage you to follow along with me, make sure I'm not getting off track. It's on 1122 in the blue Bibles. Galatians, chapter three.
Three. If you'd navigate with me. Am I clickering? Yeah. Sweet.
And I'll. And I don't. I usually. Usually when I. When I preach, I like to, like, create tension, and I want to help you discover something.
And this is just a passage that I'm going to have to tell you what the big idea is for us to be able to track with it to the end. Okay, so as we're approaching this text, this is. This is what I'm hopeful that we'll walk away with. Jesus was cursed so that we can be blessed by adoption into God's family. That's the whole track of where we're going.
So, spoiler alert, this is where we're going. But it's going to take us some time to kind of arrive there. So let's look together in Galatians 3, starting in verse 1, it says this. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.
Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain?
Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness? We'll pause there, like, whoa, hold on a second. You're coming in hot there, Mike. Like, what?
We just opened up, and we were kind of. We were kind of mellow. We're kind of chill. And now you're, like, yelling, oh, foolish Galatians. What's going on here?
Well, you notice we started in chapter three, and there was also a chapter two and a chapter one before that. What's going on here is that Paul is writing to a group of people, a community of people that he got to preach the gospel to for the first time. And these people chose to put their trust in Jesus and they started gathering together. So that's when I say the church. I'm not talking about a church building.
He didn't go around and construct church buildings. He planted churches. He stored started communities of people who devoted their lives to following Jesus together. And so he had done that. And as he moved on from town to town, he would preach the gospel, people would trust it, and then he would just move to the next town.
And so that was. We call him a missionary. He was starting churches as he went around and he gets back home and he hears the report that the people in the region of Galatia, these multiple churches, had decided that although they had heard and received and trusted the message, they needed to add something to it. They're like, the message that Paul preached was fine. Like, we're glad that we trust in Jesus and that Jesus is the Messiah, but it seems like it's kind of missing something.
We want to add a little bit of our own flavor, we want to add a little bit of our own spice and make sure that we're doing enough to make God happy with us is kind of their idea. And so as they're doing that, Paul undertakes to write this letter. And in his defense, he goes for two chapters before he just lets it loose. And here in chapter three, he's just like, are you not using your brain, you foolish Galatians? Are you thinking at all who has bewitched you?
That's fascinating. He says if there's a deviation, if you take the gospel and somebody starts to add something to it, he's not necessarily blaming them. He's saying, you're not being discerning. You're not thinking about what messages you're listening to. And somebody is proactively trying to pull you away from what's true.
He says, if you have turned away from the truth of the gospel, then there is an agent working against you who has bewitched you. The way that you process your faith and the things that you struggle with is not done in a vacuum. We do not wrestle like, we do not come to understanding of who God is and what he's like and how we live out our faith without external influences. And he's saying, if you've turned away from what's true, then somebody is trying to pull the strings in the background. They've bewitched you, they've tricked you.
There's somebody who's working against what God is trying to do. He says, it was before your eyes that Jesus was publicly portrayed as crucified. The message from the beginning was that Jesus hung on a tree. The message from the beginning was that God took the shame and the disgrace of your sin and put it on his son. And this is funny to me.
Let me ask you only this. This sounds like a dad or maybe a mom. Let me ask you one question. And then he asks five, right? Did you notice that?
Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing, with faith? Did God start a relationship with you by you doing all the right things? Did you actually manage to get your life cleaned up enough so that God would look at you and say, you know what? You're doing everything perfectly now.
You can come in and be on my team? Is that how you got into God's favor? Or did you hear a message about Christ crucified and trust that somehow, some, some way, in spite of all of your own sin, you could have access to the Father? You heard a message and you trusted it. Did you work for it or did you just hear it and there's something new that says, I don't know that I understand all the ins and outs of the economics of the spiritual transaction that takes place when God imputes my sin onto Jesus and imputes Jesus righteousness back into me.
I don't know that I understand all of the technical terminology, but I trust it.
There's something true in that.
Did you begin by working for it or by hearing with faith, with trust? Are you so foolish? Are you just not thinking, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Do you think that the way that you got in is like, now you have to work hard to stay in? Is that how family works?
I don't know if I should tell the story.
Jesse and I dated for seven years before we got married. When you're like, oh, wow, that's a really long engagement. I was 13 when we started dating. And so there weren't a lot of options for moving that relationship forward. But what that meant is I had a lot of time to get to know her dad, and her dad is very scary.
I think before we got married, actually before he retired, I think I can probably count on one hand the number of words he spoke to me. And he just didn't really say very much. Very quiet. He went to work and he worked in a top secret government facility. And so he didn't ask about work.
And so it was just like that kind of a thing. And I can remember like coming up to pick Jesse up after I got my driver's license, because I had to do that. I got my driver's license and I like, pull up and he just bought a new crossbow and he had a shooting range back in the back and down the hill a little bit, but he's like, ah, that's too far to walk. And I got this little boy coming up, he's trying to take my daughter out on the day. Let me just tune in my crossbow here on the front yard.
And so I walk up and he's a little guy. Like, he's not tall and he is like, he gets the thing and like lifting all the way up. And I'm like, how is his muscles doing that? Like, he could rip my face off. And I was scared.
Right.
Mr. Christman, I'm here to pick up Jessie. Okay, she's inside? Yes, sir. Right.
I had to go to that man and then ask him permission to marry his daughter right? Now, did I work? Did I do a good enough job to impress him that like, now he's a yes son, now you can be in my family? No, he was just really, really gracious. And he's actually a really nice guy.
Like, he's got a great heart, very compatible. And now he's a social butterfly. He'll remember everything he hears about you and then tell you back and ask you months and months later about that one thing that you mentioned offhand, like, brilliant, great, and I love him to death. But, like, I didn't get into the family because I was a good enough kid. I was 16 years old.
I've never met a 16 year old boy that I would like, want to bring into my family willingly.
I'm not alone. Like, we have a system. We have a system of adoption. And once you get to a certain age, it's really, really difficult to adopt and get teenagers adopted. We don't look at kids and like, yeah, we don't look at half grown kids and go, that's who I want to bring into my family.
Right? And so he's asking this question, like, having begun by the spirit, having been brought into God's family by the spirit, are you now going to work to keep it? Now if I. And I have made stupid decisions since we've been married, but never did Bob come to me and say, you're done. Like, you haven't done enough, you haven't made enough.
Like, now you're out of the family. He's never done that to me, does he? Or did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? That suffer is like. It's just an extreme experience.
It's an intense experience. Have you seen all of these things that God has been doing in your life and in the lives of other people? Have you experienced those things to that extreme degree for nothing? Has it just been a waste of time? If indeed it has been a waste of time?
Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness?
He says, have you noticed that when you get together as a community that the Spirit of God shows up, that the Spirit of God is among you, working in you, working among you, that you love one another well, and I don't know what was going on in Galatia, but he says, do you think that the Holy Spirit is doing miracles among you because you are so great? Do you think that the Spirit of God is healing people miraculously because you are a good enough prayer, that you've devoted enough time to fasting, that you've made it possible for God to hear your request? When you ask for some kind of a miracle, you really think that you can be holy enough to make it so that God will bend his ear to you? Or did you just hear that Christ was crucified on your behalf and trust that somehow, if you believed and trusted in Jesus, that He would listen to you? Do you realize he is the infinite, almighty Creator of the universe?
He does not owe you the time of day. He does not owe you to tell you what time of day it is, nor to give you a second?
And you have the audacity to walk into the throne room of the Almighty Creator of the Universe and ask for something?
Is that because you have worked so hard to make yourself commendable to God? Or is it just because Jesus has made a way? Jesus did the work and God has brought you in and gives you an ear like, what is. What is actually going on? Use your brain.
Somebody wants you to believe a lie, who has deceived you. But know this. The Holy Spirit is our certificate of adoption. The Holy Spirit is our certificate of adoption. He says, have you not noticed that the Spirit is at work among you, that there are lives that are changed in your midst?
And don't you know that God doesn't just leave and manifest His Spirit in strong ways to just anybody like That's a gift that God would show up. It is a gift that God would work. It's a gift that God would do miracles. It's a gift that God would convict people of sin. Because don't you know that I wouldn't even know what sin is if the Spirit of God didn't show me what was going on in my own soul.
I'm pretty sure I could convince myself that I'm a good person.
And yet the Spirit of God shows me that for all of the good things that I've done with my life, I have an undercurrent of self centeredness. I do things so that people, like, look at me and worship me instead of look at God and worship him. I'm just a mixed bag of motives. I don't even know why I do what I do most of the time. And yet it is God's gift that his spirit is at work among you, dividing the bone from the marrow.
The word of God is teaching us what is true. Don't you know that God's doing that?
And how did you get there?
Did you get there because you didn't curse that one time you stubbed your toe?
Or that time you drove down 200?
Did you get there because you wore the right clothes when you went to church? Did you get there because you had perfect attendance at Sunday school? Did you get there because you drove an extra 15, 16 miles to go to the really, really good Bible study? Like, how did you get into God's grace? Is it by what you did?
Or did God show up and say, my son is crucified so that you can be forgiven? And you say, I don't understand how that works, but I'm in.
Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Do we just hear that Jesus is doing stuff and we just trust Jesus?
And it just leads me to ask the question, think about it. How has our experience of God changed since trusting Jesus? This is not. I'm not somebody who says, like, you have to trust the right experience or anything like that, but I do see here in the Scripture, which God consistently shows to be reliable, that he says, when you trust Jesus, you will have an experience that the Holy Spirit is working among the community that you're part of and doing something in you. How has your experience of God, how has your experience of God changed since you've trusted in Jesus?
And if you're like, I don't know that anything is any different I don't know that I've noticed anything. I just ask, have you trusted him?
Have you said Jesus? I don't understand it all. I don't know how I couldn't write down the formula by which you're working. But I trust that there's something about the sin in me that keeps me away from God. And there's something about your death which makes it so that I can have life with God again.
I trust that. I'm not trying. I just trust it. That's faith. The Bible word, the churchy word is faith, but it's trust.
Jesus was cursed. Jesus was crucified so that we can be blessed by adoption into God's family. Let's read a couple more verses. Know then in verse seven that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed.
So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
What's going on here? Why are we talking about Abraham? Father Abraham, I heard that he had many sons one time. And what does that have to do with me? Can I Bible nerd with you?
Just briefly. And when I say briefly, I say that not knowing. Any idea how long it's going to take me to Bible nerd? Okay, So I want to teach you the whole Bible. We got, I don't know, we're 20 minutes in.
Do you think we got time?
The book starts in the beginning. In the beginning, God. God is the infinite Almighty created the universe. And he decided that he wanted to create the world. And in the world, he made all kinds of critters.
He made birds, and he made fish, and he made creepy crawly animals and he made big fat, like, cow animals. He made all the critters. And then he said, you know what? I want to make something that is special, that's distinct, that acts like me to the rest of everything that I made. And so he creates man and woman in his image.
God creates humanity through to be stewards of the rest of God's creation. And he puts these people in a garden in a perfect setting and says, hey, guys, everything is taken care of. You've got all the food. I've even got meaningful work for you to do. How great is that?
God didn't just put us in a garden and say, lounge around and play harps. Like, I'm a musician and I think that I'd get bored singing all Day. He doesn't just give us work. Like, he gives us creative work to do. He says, adam, name all the animals, come up with.
Like, categorize these things, work together. Like, I've created. And now you get to wonder at my creation by trying to understand what it is that I've done. Like, I've got some meaningful work. I've got some even, maybe even scientific work for you to do here in the garden.
So God creates these people to reflect him and puts them in the garden, provides for everything that they need. And really, really quickly, someone comes along and says, don't you think God's holding out on you?
Don't you think that, like, you could probably do God's job better than him? Can you really trust him? And humanity, without any other suggestion, says, yeah, I probably could be like God. Which is crazy, because God made humanity to be like him, but not in the way that we are tempted to be like Him. We want to be him, and he wants us to be reflections of Him.
We want to take his place, and he wants to work together with us.
And so we introduce a virus into the perfect system. We call the virus Sin. And from there on out, like, God preserves humanity. He lets humans continue to live. He lets humans continue to repopulate the.
But things are going wrong. So all of that kind of happens in chapter three, the very next chapter. You've got a brother murdering another brother in church. Like, they go to church, and one brother gets mad at the other brother and smashes him in the head with a rock. That's pretty bad.
I might murder my brother. I don't have a brother, but I might be willing to. Sorry, not looking at my sister either. I might be willing to do violence to people outside of a church setting, but most of us know to be on our best behavior in church. But like, in chapter four, right out the gate, like, they go to church, they offer sacrifice to God.
God's like, hey, this isn't quite right. And instead of doing the right thing to God, I kill the person who did what's right.
That's the next chapter. That's the next scene. And what's crazy to me is that God doesn't wipe them off the face of the planet. But this. This virus goes on.
It grows, it grows, it grows, and it grows throughout the family. And then God says, you know what? I'm gonna narrow things down. I'm. I'm going to narrow things down to just one family.
I picked this guy Noah. Noah's going to be the only one that survives. Let's hit reset on the world. I'll start with this one family. And then he does.
But then things don't get better after the flood. Like, actually, Noah himself is even spiritually compromised and ends up an alcoholic trying to deal with the trauma of watching, I don't know, the whole globe flood.
And it just keeps getting worse. We just keep thinking that we can work hard enough to get to God. We build a tower. We get so impressed with our technology. We.
Which at the time was bricks and mortar, we say, God, we can build stuff. We can glue these rocks together. Aren't we fantastic? Nothing can stop us. We'll build a tower to heaven.
And God's like, yeah, you guys aren't gonna be able to talk to each other anymore. Construction has been a nightmare ever since. Amen.
And then God says, all right, here's the deal. I'm gonna find this guy Abe. I'm going to call him out of idolatry. I'm going to call him out of it, and I'm going to do something special with Abe. I'm going to use just his family.
And through this one family, I'm going to bless the whole wide world. But then the spotlight zeroes in on this one family, because Abraham has Isaac and Isaac has Jacob, And Jacob's name gets changed to Israel. And Israel has at least 12 sons and a daughter. And those become the tribes of Israel. And this one family becomes a nation.
And. And that nation gets settled in a land. And when a nation gets land and laws, they become legitimate. And then God is just constantly showing up to this people that he specially created and crafted and said, hey, hey, hey. I'm God.
I'm the One who made you. I'm the one who called you. I just want to be with you. I'm going to make it possible for my presence to be the center of your culture. I'm going to show up in your temple in a special way.
You're going to. I'm going to be God to you in a special way. Like, I'm not to any other family in the world. Like, will you just walk with me? And they're like, yeah, we'll do that.
And then they don't. Over and over again, God says, will you walk with me? And they say, yes. And then they don't. And over and over again, God says, will you walk with me?
And they say, yes. And then they don't. That sounds like my story.
And this family has rules. They have laws. They have. They have a government, and they Have a history and all this kind of stuff. And God continues to pursue him and they continue to run away.
And then God sends Jesus through this family and he preaches to this family that is just so locked in on the rules. And they think that the way that we make God happy is by following his law. And he's like, yeah, I gave you the law, like you should operate by that. But that doesn't make you any better than anybody else. When you get into the land, don't think that I've saved you because you're so special.
Like you're actually pretty stubborn.
And they don't get it.
And Jesus comes, he says, hey, I'm the fulfillment of all the rules.
I am the way, the truth and the life and trust in me and I'll make you right with God. And some of them get up at least 12, well, 11.
And from those 11, blue collar workers, for most of them, they begin to share the message that Jesus makes it possible for us to be right with God because he was crucified. And people believe that, but the family thinks it's just a family thing. Have you ever had a situation that's just a family thing? We don't talk about it with other people. Right?
Other people don't need to know the story about what happened that one time. The gospel becomes a story that they just share internally. Jews are only preaching Jews that Jesus is crucified. And God says, this is not just a family story. This is for everybody.
No, no, no, no, no. You can't trust Jesus if you don't also part of the family. And he says, no, the family's for everybody. And the Galatians are people that start to think that the way that I make myself right with God is I follow the rules. And Paul is here writing, saying no in verse seven.
Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. It's not those who were descended by blood. It is those who were descended by faith, by trust. The Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, non Jews, by trust, by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham.
The man of faith says, we've got one family, one nation who God is working with. So what?
I was hopeful that by giving you all of that backstory, you would have a different experience of your place in the history of salvation, that God has been doing something for a long time. And we kind of assume as Gentile Americans that we have a right to be accepted by God. We just kind of assume that. But you should know that that was a revolutionary idea.
And access to God's family is available through trust.
If we trust Jesus, we can have access to being part of God's family. Know that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And when we trust Jesus, we get brought into this history that Abraham believed God. He walked out of, he left idolatry and worshiping a bunch of other false gods long before the law was ever written down. Says, if you want to be children of Abraham, you got to trust God the way that Abraham trusted God.
I think oftentimes we come to church or we pursue religion because we're asking the question, how does God fit into my story? Like, I've got my life and I just want to know, how does God fit into all of this stuff?
And I would just ask us to consider that we start to begin to see ourselves, themselves as part of God's story. Just to kind of flip it a little bit. Instead of me trying to fit God into my life, trying to fit my life into God's story because Jesus was cursed so that we can be blessed by adoption into God's family. Read a couple more verses here, starting in verse 10.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse, for it is written. Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written. Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
You want to add something? You want. You say, yeah, I trust Jesus. I prayed that prayer. Like, I started that.
But now I really got to work hard to make sure that he doesn't get angry with me. And God's design for our life with him is abiding in Jesus. Not trying to pay Jesus off. Our faith is not a transaction where I'm going to do enough good things so that, like, the scales balance out. It's an abiding, It's a rest, it's a trust.
It's a. You're going to go there and you're going to do that, and I'm just going to be with you as you do it. Jesus, you're going to go in and you're going to make payment for my sin before almighty, holy, perfect, righteous God. And I'm just going to be there because you let me come. And I'm not coming in here thinking that you owe me anything.
I'm coming in just because you have said I can come and I trust you. But if you rely on the works of the law, if you look at God and say, all right, God, I'm going to do it. I'm going to grip my teeth and I'm going to do it. Know that what you're asking for is for a standard of perfection to be laid on you. Because if we choose to embrace the law as a way to make God happy with us, to earn our acceptance with God, then we are required to do everything the law demands.
The law in and of itself can't be separated. You don't get to pick and choose which is also true in our world, right? We don't get to pick which speed limits we want to obey. Technically, It is evident that no one is justified, no one is accepted before God by the law. For the righteous shall live by faith, shall live by trust.
But the law is not of trust. The law is not from faith, it's from works. The one who does the law shall live by the law. And if you fail to live in one part of the law, then you failed the whole thing.
Righteousness comes by trusting. Well, how do I know if I'm trusting? How do I know if I'm putting my. Myself in the right place? How do I know that?
Like, I. I've got it calibrated correctly. Am I. Am I trying to make a transaction here and pay God off or pay him back or something like that? Or am I abiding in Christ? I just ask, like, what do you.
What does your prayer life sound like? Like, what is. And what does our prayer life tell us about who we trust most?
So our prayer life sound like. Like, lord, empower me, give me what I want.
Or do we intercede for others and ask that Jesus would be at work in others and that Jesus would be at work in us, that he would keep us close and help us to be aware of his presence even in dark places where everything is broken?
Or are we just silent? Our prayer life is nonexistent. I don't talk to God. I don't ask him for anything. I don't tell him anything.
He's got other things to worry about. What does our prayer life tell us about who we trust most? Because it may be that you're trusting Jesus. It may be that you're trusting Jesus to trust you. And it may be that you just trust you or you just trust your job, or you just trust, like that special relationship, or you just trust satisfaction of that one desire that's constantly driving you forward.
What does our prayer life tell us about who we trust most?
Christ redeems us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. God's family gets God's blessing. God's family gets God's blessing. And Abraham was a guy that God said, hey, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you my family.
I'm going to bless you. Which is good news for Abraham and bad news for everybody who's not related to Abraham.
Accept that we can be a part of that heritage as we trust in Jesus. God's family gets God's blessing. And access to God's family is available through trust. Some of you wrote it down.
But what's crazy, it's crazy so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. The blessing that God gave to Abraham and the blessing that God is extending to his family is the blessing of his Spirit in us.
The blessing of God is the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, residing in us. Even as God was working with Abraham's family and even as he set up their whole town, their whole town was supposed to be centered around the tabernacle. Their whole camp was centered around the tabernacle. And in the middle of the tabernacle was God's holy presence. And like, so there's the holy presence and then there's a curtain, and then there's a room and there's a bunch of furniture in the room.
But if you wanted to go into God's presence, what you. The closest you could get was to be outside that tent, inside the courtyard. You could get into the fence, and at the fence, you could offer a sacrifice, you could offer a prayer, you could do something to give a gift to God, and you would put it in the hands of another man, and that man would then carry it in for you. You never had access to the presence of God unless you were the High priest. Even as God is showing himself and showing his blessing and showing his presence to that people, there's a distance, there's a separation.
But Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written. Cursed is everyone who's hanged on a tree so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith. It's not that we get to come to church and we get to get to pray to God and feel connected to God through that semi bald guy that kind of yells a lot. It's that God's presence is with me every day.
I need the every hour. And I'm so grateful that you say that you'll be with me every hour as I trust you. It's a better gift, it's a better promise. And he says that's the evidence that you know that you can't earn your way to be with God. Oh, foolishness.
Galatians, who's bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish?
Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. The blessing of God is the presence of God.
The presence of God is his Holy Spirit. Residing in us is the confirmation that God's at work and that God loves you in spite of your sin because Jesus was cursed so that we can be blessed by adoption into God's family.
So do you trust Jesus?
We have access to that family, but only through him.
He is the word of God, not written on paper in black and white, but the risen Lord of life, raised to life in flesh, seated at the right hand of God and interceding for you, Jesus, you're the shepherd of your people and so I pray that you'd lead and guide us in where we need to go. What are the thoughts that we need to follow?
All the voices in our world and all the voices in our head. Would you help us to tune our hearts to your voice?
That we would not bewitched, we would not be bewitched led away from what's true, that the way that we have access to you is through Jesus and just by trust.
Lord, I pray that you would lead and guide us as we talk to you this morning.
For those who are outside of your family, Lord, that they would lead be brought in that for the first time they would trust yout to forgive their sin.
And for those of us who started there and have slowly kind of drifted to trusting our own behavior, God, I just pray that yout'd undermine that trust, Lord, that you'd help us to see ourselves in your story.
And that we could respond with gratitude that your presence is in us, among us, working through us, God, at the risk of being crazy, Lord, I pray that it would be evident that your spirit is at work in this people.
I ask that you would show up in a way that's undeniable.
Not for the sake of show, so that we can pat ourselves on the back and feel good that you're among us, but Lord, just so that you would bring to life those who are dead and far from you.
That we would see what kind of love you have for us, that we would not just be called children, but that you would make us your children.
Would you do that in us today?
In Jesus name and for his glory we pray. Amen.
LINKS
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
