Why does religion always feel like a list of things you have to do?
WATCH
Adopted, 2 of 3 from May 17, 2026
“God’s plan includes temporary safeguards while He prepares permanent solutions.”
Galatians 3:15-29 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon teaches that God’s covenant with Abraham was always meant to be fulfilled in Jesus, and that the law of Moses was only a temporary guardian to highlight human sin until Christ arrived. It emphasizes that anyone, regardless of background or past, can be adopted into God’s family and justified before Him solely by trusting in Jesus rather than by religious rule‑keeping or personal goodness.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 How do we usually try to get approval from God?
💬 What temporary problems do we treat like permanent problems?
💬 What reasons do we give why Jesus shouldn’t accept us?
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Good morning again, Church.
We've been in a series that's called Adopted, and we've been taking a look at what does it take? How do we get brought into God's family? I think there's this underlying. Can I get like top level, philosophical kind of at the start here, just out the gate, there's this idea that I think we all kind of inherently know that there's some. Something wrong.
Like I don't feel connected to God as the default setting of my life. Like, we wouldn't have all we have wouldn't have friends and family who were just like in crisis or wouldn't have friends and family who just kind of are hostile towards God or people who are like, searching after God and trying all of these religions. Like, that would not be the case if at the out the gate our default setting was everything was, was, was kosher with God. Everything was good between me and God. Like, we know that there's something kind of busted.
And so the question is, like, how do we, how do we overcome that gap? How do we feel like we belong with God? How do we know that God is pleased with us? Like, what's the way that we get brought into God's family? Right?
Is that okay? Can I say that? Are we okay? We're tracking so far. Good.
The question is like, how does religion typically answer that question? How do we get made right with God now? For better, for worse. The message that I got from the church that I grew up in was you just got to be a good person. Like, you got to make sure that you don't say curse words.
You got to make sure that you don't smoke tobacco. You got to make sure that you don't, like, hang out with people who are doing weird stuff, avoid people that are kind of kooky. Make sure that you're doing the right thing. Make sure you don't swear. Especially don't swear in church.
Like, if you. Sorry, I almost did it just to make a point, but I don't really want to lose you guys right out the gate. Like, that was the message I got from the church that I grew up in was like, you just got to do, like, do good stuff. And then if you're a good boy, then God will be happy with you. I think generally like religions, that's the case whether you're Buddhist, you kind of are.
The thing you're trying to do as a Buddhist is eliminate desires. And so, like, if you can just get to be that you don't want anything, then you'll be at peace with the universe, and you'll get absorbed back into its essence. If you're Islam, like, there's a significant number of rules and regulations and different things that you got to do in order to make sure that Allah is pleased with you, welcomes you into the kingdom. There's some shortcuts you can take to get there. But, like, that's all part of the system.
It's what you do that gets you brought into the family. And that, like, is typically how we think of religion. Like, I want to get to God, so I'm going to show up and I'm going to try to do something so that God is happy with me. The problem is that in the text that we read last week very explicitly, it said there's nobody who's justified by following the rules. Like, it is impossible for humans to be accepted by God because they did the rules good enough.
It's just not a thing that can happen. No one is justified by the law is what the verses say, which is good news, because it kind of simplifies your search for religion. If you come to a religion and religion says, here's a list of things you have to do, or, here's a list of things you don't have to do, or, here's a list of people that you have to avoid. Like, if you walk into a religion and that's the way that you get accepted by God, you can just walk away because you're never going to be able to do it. Now, I like you a lot.
Y' all are really great people. And I don't mean to sound like condescending, but, like, you can't. And I've met some really, really, like, genuine people who genuinely believe that they can do enough good stuff to make sure that the good stuff they do outweighs the bad. But, man, the bad stuff I do is so stinking heavy. And it feels like the good stuff that I do, even when I do something that's good, it's kind of selfishly motivated, right?
And so there's just not a way that we can do the right thing in order to get right with God. So what do we turn? What do we do?
The good news is this, that Jesus was cursed so that we can be blessed by adoption into God's family. The way that we get adopted into God's family, the way that things get made right between us and God is Jesus makes a way. There's something about his crucifixion, his being cursed that makes it possible for us to be right with him. And so that's really, like, what we're talking about. We're taking this jewel and kind of holding it up and looking at it and like, okay, what does this mean?
How do I. What does that mean for me? Okay. Like, if that's how I'm right with God, then what do I do with the rest of my life? Because that's.
That seems. Seems pretty kind of simple. Like, let Jesus take care of it. Okay, Jesus, take the wheel.
And it's like you're driving down 200 all over again.
I don't think that's faith in action when we drive down 200, but nevertheless, I. I digress.
I didn't. In my first run of these notes, I didn't have this in here. But as I have just been praying with you guys this morning, as we are, I want you to know that God sees the brokenness in the world and God cares about it, and he's intervening. And I want you to know that he gives us language for how to wrestle with what's broken in the world. So this is completely separate from.
Not completely separate from my sermon. I think it'll tie in. But I just wanted to show you something that's in scripture that maybe you didn't know that you had permission to say to God. Okay, so I've asked Sophie to throw in Psalm 22 for me. And this is a psalm.
It's in scripture. It's a psalm that Jesus prays. And so I think that gives us permission to pray it too. And so if you didn't know that you could say these kinds of things to God, then I want you to know it's there. Can I click it?
Maybe.
Sweet. It's an old psalm. This was written down way, way, way before Jesus. But when Jesus is on the cross, he prays this prayer. And so before we pray together, the disciples prayer, I just want for us to prayerfully read Psalm 22.
And. And my hope is that the Holy Spirit will minister to where you're at, as we are kind of praying these words together. Okay? Okay. Okay.
Cool. To the choir master, according to the doe of the dawn. That's just the melody. A psalm of David says this.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer. And by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted, they trusted and you delivered them to you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man. Scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me.
They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, for he delights in him.
Yet you are he who took me from the womb. You made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you I was cast from my birth. And from my mother's womb you have been my God. Be not far from me, for trouble is near and there's none to help.
We'll pause there. Let's pray together. The DISCIPLES PRAYER Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy 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 deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Would you navigate with me to the book of Galatians in Chapter 3? Galatians, Chapter 3. If you would like to follow along with me in the blue Bibles, they're kind of tucked around here. If you pick one up off of the chair, it's going to be on page 1122 in the blue Bibles. If you have one of the old blue Bibles, I don't know what page number it's on, but on the new ones it's 11:22.
What's that? 12:13 in the old blue Bibles, 11:22 in the new ones, we're in Galatians chapter three.
And we're going to start reading in verse 15. So as we're reading, remember that he has just finished saying, there's nobody who's justified by works of the law. There's nobody who's accepted by God by what they have done. But we can be made brought into God's family by trusting Jesus. All right, so Starting in verse 15, To give a human example, brothers, even with man made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.
Now, the promises were made to Abraham and and to his offspring. It does not say and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring who is Christ. This is what I mean. The law which came 430 years afterward does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the Law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
We'll pause there. We track with that. Is that super clear? We see how that relates to our lives right away. There's sometimes where you read the Bible and you're like, ah, Jesus, you're going to have to meet me here because I don't know what's going on.
And I spent a ton of time trying to figure out, how do I, what pictures do I give you, how do I help us kind of wrap our heads around what Jesus is doing here. There's some language that is pretty technical. And so the best thing that I could do was come up with a chart. Okay, so I have a chart for you. It's going to get kind of detailed, but this is the basic principle is that like God comes and gives a covenant to Abraham and that covenant, like the promise that he made to Abraham leads to an inheritance.
Okay, this is pretty simple so far, right? The chart looks like this. There's a covenant and it's coming to Abraham and then there's an inheritance. All right, so he says to give a human example, brothers, even with a man made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. He's as he's writing to the Galatians, he's assuming there's a familiarity with some kind of a legal thing that he's calling a covenant.
And I think what he's asking us to kind of do here is his covenant theologically can be a really, really big word. There's a lot of things that get piled onto that term. But what he's describing here sounds to me like something we actually would recognize as a last will and testament. So he's using the word covenant to talk about a last will and testament. Now, I'm not asking if you're like a legal scholar, but does everybody know what a last will and testament is to some degree?
It's a piece of paper that you write down your wishes of what you want to happen to your stuff after you die. So oftentimes you're bequeathing. This is a fun word to say, kind of a bummer when you're having to use it, but bequeathing your things or your property or whatever to other people who are still alive. So you prepare this document before you die, and then once you're gone, there's somebody who kind of reads this and makes sure that everybody gets that all the stuff goes to where it's supposed to go. That's the human Example, so he's going to use this word covenant.
And he's kind of talking about a last will and testament, but he's also going to interchange that idea with the word promise. All right, so there's kind of two words in the passage that when you take them together, I think they're overlapping and giving us this idea of a last will and testament. Right, so let me start over to give a human example then, brothers, even with a man made covenant, so even something that we legally are familiar with, we're not just take God out of the picture. No one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified. So once you make a last will and testament and you sign your name, people don't come afterwards and then change what you said you wanted.
And it's actually like really, really, this is one area where I think even secular society has some integrity. If somebody's expressed something in their last will and testament, they work really, really hard to make sure that it gets done. You don't get to change it after they're gone. And that's really what ends up causing a bunch of fights in a bunch of family. Because the person who made the decision isn't there to ask anymore what they meant by that.
Right. Some of you know and some of you are remembering.
Lost the train. Sorry. To give a human example, brothers, even with a man made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified. So we've got a last will and testament that was made and that once it's been made, there's no other parties that get to come in and change what the terms are. Now, the promises that last will and testament were made to Abraham and his offspring.
It does not say to offsprings referring to many, but referring to one and to your offspring who is Christ. So he's saying this covenant, this last will and testament was given to Abraham and it was given to Abraham by trust. Like God said, I'm going to give you all of these promises. And Abraham said, okay, I trust you. I believe that's going to happen.
And so that's how Abraham got into the covenant. That's how he got into the promises. That's how he got into listed as a beneficiary of God's last will and testament. Now can you already feel like how maybe this analogy is going to break down? Like God writing a last will and testament?
That's kind of goofy. And I think we can see why some of the terminology gets a little bit muddy there. Because he's trying to say. He's trying to talk in a human terms about something that's big and divine. Okay, so Abraham comes in by trust.
But it's not just to Abraham. It's also to Abraham and. And to his offspring. Now, this is crazy, because you would think Pastor Michael has read the Bible a couple of times, which is true. And Pastor Michael's familiar with a lot of things in the Bible, which is true.
But, man, until I read this this week, I was like, oh, my gosh. I went back and read in Genesis chapter 12 and Genesis chapter 15, and in Genesis chapter 17, these promises. And it's crazy. Something I had never noticed before. Even when I've read Galatians, I didn't notice this before that.
That whenever God is giving promises to Abraham, he also is articulating it to his offspring. Like, every time he talks about it is to you and to your offspring. To you and to your offspring. Crazy. I had not seen that before.
I had to go back and look at it now. Question not related to the Bible. If you're driving down the road and you see, like, a bunch of animals, a couple of the men have, like a couple of the boy animals have things like this on the top of their head. The girl animals don't they call them does. If you're driving by, what are your kids in the back seat going to yell when they see those animals?
Okay, what deer? Doe. A deer. A female deer? Yeah, they're going to deer, right?
Okay. Now if you're driving down the road at night and you look up and there's one of those animals in the middle of the road, what is your wife next to you or your spouse next to you going to scream, stop. Okay, probably stop just looking at one. They're going to yell, deer, right? So is it deer or is it deer?
There's some times where the word doesn't change, but the meaning does. So you're looking at some deer, many deer, multiple deer, or you're looking at a deer, a female deer. What's the rest of that song go?
Me unnamed I call myself. What Paul does here is he looks back at that text. He says every time that God says something about Abraham, he says something about Abraham and Abraham's offspring. And in the context and everything around, up until that point, we had read offspring as referring to many. And it makes sense to me why we would do that.
Because the promise part of the promise is God says to Abraham, I'm going to make you the father of many nations. And so we're expecting offspring to refer to the plural. But what Paul does, he looks back, he goes every place. It's always singular. They're always like, not expressively saying offsprings plural.
He's talking about an offspring. And so he says that the promises are made to Abraham and his offspring. And the offspring offspring is Jesus. So everything that God promises to Abraham, he's saying, I'm going to give this to you, Abe, but I'm really giving it to your descendant. And ultimately, like, it's Jesus crazy.
Somebody got it. All right, Jesus is the ultimate recipient of God's promises to Abraham. So God makes this promise, he has his last will and testament and he's giving it to Jesus. And then Jesus now is the ultimate recipient of the inheritance. What is the inheritance?
What's the thing that we get when we get to be a part of God's family, eternal life? We get to, yeah, we get to interact with God in a face to face way.
We get to get God's approval. So when we get God's approval, the Biblical term for that is like justification. So when God looks at us and says, I approve of you, you are mine, I declare you righteous. That means we've got his approval. So Jesus is ultimately the one who gets to inherit all of that stuff.
And part of that inheritance, if we look at the other verses in Galatians 2, is, is God's spirit, his presence in us? Crazy. Now here's the thing, and this is a principle that I think we see here. And so I'm going to draw it out here, but it's one that I see in the text everywhere and kind of it helps me to wrap my head around how God communicates to us. It's the simple principle of this.
God uses things we know to teach us things we don't. God uses things we know to teach us things we don't. Can you imagine knowing everything in the whole wide world? Everything that could possibly ever be known, and to know every single language and to know the actual facts of how physics works and quantum mechanics, of how the universe holds itself together. And can you imagine trying to communicate everything that you know about everything to an ant?
You got to figure out a language, you got to figure out a way to communicate in a way that the ant can understand. And then you're going to have to talk about things that the ant knows in order to illustrate things that the ant can't possibly know.
God uses what we know to teach us things we don't know. So here he's saying, you Guys are familiar with the last will and testament. What God's doing here is kind of like that. And it's crazy what God's doing. He's actually like put Jesus into the.
God made sure that Jesus was baked into the terms of the contract before we even understood what the contract was.
So from the beginning, the story was always going to be the way that we get into God's family is by trusting God that what he says is true. For Abraham, he trusted God that he was going to get all these blessings and that there was going to be this inheritance for us. We trust Jesus that Jesus is going to make it possible for us to be adopted into his, into God's family. So the question is if that's been the plan all along, if it's been baked into the contract from the very beginning, if we've misunderstood it, if we've misapplied it, if all that thing, if all that stuff is true, but now we're understanding it. The question that I think we really need to wrestle with is how do we usually try to get approval from God?
Like if we're kind of looking at it going, oh, I never thought about it that way. Well, you should think about it that way because that's. I'm using scripture to explain scripture. I would not look at Genesis and be like, did you guys notice offspring is singular? Or it can be singular.
I wouldn't have noticed that. But because the Holy Spirit through Paul has written down this observation that was there the whole time. Oh, wow. God must have meant for it to be like that. That's incredible.
What are the ways that I have misunderstood and I have tried to get God's approval?
Because there's times where we continue, like, we're like, oh, I never thought about it that way. God must really, like, care about me, must really love me. He must really want for me to trust him more. And yet what I'm going to do is I'm going to keep trying to earn his favor. I'm going to keep trying to earn my way to be with Him.
No, no, no, it's not like that. So what are the things that we're tempted by to get God's approval from?
Okay, so if you're like me, you're like, alright, Michael, I hear what you're saying, but you're saying Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17. There's a whole lot of chapters between Galatians and Genesis. Like most of this book, most of this book is stuff that happens in between that thing that happened and this Understanding of what happened, where we get the thing. Right. So what is all of this for?
What do we do with this? Anybody else? Just me. Okay. Well, Paul thought so.
Let's read. Oh, I lost my page. Let's read the next verses in Galatians, Chapter 3, Verse 19. Why then the law. What do we do with all that?
Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. And it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. What do we do with that?
Why, then the law? Here's the thing. God has always known what we need and provided. God always knew from the beginning what we were going to need to be able to get on board with what it was that he was trying to do the whole time. And he's always made a way for us to be able to be provided for.
He knew that there was this huge opportunity between Abraham and Jesus for us to mess the whole thing up, for Abraham's kids to completely walk away and forget all the things. Like, can you imagine? Can you imagine? Can you imagine, hypothetically, if you wanted to give your kids some important information and you say to them verbally, here is some important information. I would like for you to hold it and treasure it and live your lives around it.
And I would like for you to bestow this to your children. And I would like for them to then bestow it to their children up until the thing comes to pass. Like, what confidence do we have?
It's not my kids I'm picking on. It's me. There's stuff my parents told me that went in one ear and completely out the other. I had to be a grown adult before I understood half of what my dad said to me, right? So like God said, God knows that we don't listen and that we don't pay attention to what our parents try to teach you.
I was listening. There's a. There's a study that shows that for babies, for widow babies, babies are so cute, but they have, like, the serotonin trigger in their brains to Mom's voice. Little babies, like, from the womb, if they hear Mom's voice, all of the, like, pleasure sensors in their brains go off. Mom's voice is like, the best drug in the world for widow babies, right?
Did you know that when little babies become teenagers, it completely flips? And it's not Mom's voice that gives all those serotonin triggers. It's Actually the voice of literally any stranger.
Science. Like, they studied their brains. Like, there's something that happens. There's a switch that flips where all of those signals that used to be attached to mom, that now we're attached to anything that's new. And eventually it comes back to the middle.
But, like, that's how we work.
God has always known what we needed and provided. So why then does the law exist? Because this promise is going to take generations to come to pass. The law is kind of like, do I have. Yeah, it's on my chart.
Okay, so we've got this covenant to offspring to Abraham and his offspring. And then there's kind of this sidebar that is the law. And the law came through Moses, if you didn't know. It was about 430 years. He's given round Numbers here about 430 years later.
And. And the thing of the law was, you guys need to make sure that you keep yourself separate from the way that the world thinks. There's a separation from the world, a division from the world. And the way that they Marked out that division was by external signs, by, like, circumcision and like, take. Making sure that they followed the Sabbath and making sure that they ate kosher.
Like, all of that stuff was designed to help them maintain an identity that was distinct from every other people in the world. Because God was going to do something special through Abraham's family. If, like. So there's this thing that God has provided to make sure that over the generations they continue to make to. To remember what it is that God said he was going to do to Abraham.
Because God plan includes temporary safeguards while he prepares permanent solutions. God's plan includes temporary safeguards while he prepares permanent solutions.
He's been telling a story throughout all of human history. And we tend to think that the most important part of human history is the part that we live in.
Yeah, I know that something happened with that guy. He's dead now. It doesn't matter. It didn't change my life. Right.
Like, we tend to think the most important part of human history is the part that I live in. That's why history class is super boring for most teenagers and adults.
But God's plan includes temporary safeguards while he prepares permanent solutions. He knew what the plan was all along, but he knew what it was going to take for him to work his plan out in the way that he wanted to tell the story. He knew it was going to take some time. So. So he says, you know what?
I'm going to Set up these temporary safeguards until we get to the point where I'm ready to finish installing these permanent solutions.
We bought a house. It had a pool. Well, technically it had a swamp, but it was sold as a pool, Marketed as a pool. And what we did, for better or for worse, never had a pool before. We don't know how to take care of it.
But because it was a swamp, I thought, well, let's just drain all the water out, we can scrub it real good and then we can fill it back up and it'd be fine, right? What that meant though was we had a seven foot, nine foot hole in our backyard and our kids are kids. Like, they just run around like crazy. And so what we did was we had to say, hey, when your kids come up, when your friends come over, you're not allowed to be on the pool deck in that area where that is. Because falling into a nine foot hole onto concrete is a different experience than falling into water.
Now, water's dangerous too. But like, the nine foot hole thing was freaky, right? Does that mean now that my kids are prohibited from ever going into the pool yard? No, it was a temporary safeguard until I provided a permanent solution. Lord, I hope it's permanent.
I wish he would. That's a different sermon.
Not everything that you're going through is gonna last forever.
For better or for worse, not everything that you're going through is gonna last forever. And God is with us in the interim. God is with us every day of our lives. And there's times where by his mercy, he gives us a little bit extra safety for a temporary season so that we can make it through till we get to the place where everything's locked down.
The law was designed to keep the people's attention on the problem, so that when the ultimate solution came, they would readily embrace him. What was the problem that the law was trying to keep their eyes on? The problem was my sin. Because there's this thing that we do. We do it personally and we do it in religion.
We do it in church sometimes where we like to think the problem is always outside of us. Like, if there's something wrong in my life, it's somebody else's fault. Somebody did this to me and it all makes sense. But the problem is always outside of us. And the thing that God in his scripture over and over is trying to draw our attention to is that the problem is in me.
It's not that they haven't sinned. The problem's in them too. But the problem that Jesus is Holding me accountable to the problem that God is trying to get me to get my eyes on is the problem that happens in me. He's sneaky. He's real sneaky.
You know, the disciples came and they asked him how to pray. And you know what he told them to pray. Forgive me my transgressions as I forgive those who've transgressed against me. I don't want to pray that.
I don't want God to forgive me the way that I forgive other people. I don't want him to cancel my debt the way that I cancel my debtors. Like, I don't want that. I want him to be super powered, super forgiving to me. And what he does with all the rest of you is up to him.
I don't care. But I want him. I want him to make sure that I get blessed, right? But he says, you want to know how to pray? You want to know how to get close to me.
What you should do is you should pray that I would be as forgiving to you as you are to others. Oh, man. That means the problem is in me. I wanted the problem to be in them. I wanted to blame them.
I wanted to hold them accountable. I want to hold them responsible. I want them to have to pay for their stuff. And he says, yes, ultimately there is judgment. I'll make sure that everything that's broken in the world has come clean.
But the thing that I need you to do today is to deal with the problem in you.
The law was designed to keep their attention on the sin in their heart, so that when Jesus, the ultimate solution, came, they would readily embrace him.
That God had personally established the covenant with Abraham. That's actually the story we read in Genesis 15. I know it's kind of a weird thing to read in the end of a worship thing, but there's this exchange where God shows up and says to Abraham, don't worry, I got you. I'll be your shield. And he says, what are you even talking about?
Because I don't even have an heir. I don't have any sons to pass on my inheritance to. Who? Like, you've blessed me with all this stuff. Since you draw, since you called me in chapter 12.
You've been with me. You've blessed me with all this stuff. You've given me a place to rest. You've given me all these cows. Like, you've given me everything that I need.
You've blessed me, and I'm just gonna. I don't know who I'm gonna give it to. You haven't given me an heir. There's no one to share the inheritance with. And God says, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't worry. Look at the stars. If you can count the stars, if you can wrap your head around the glory of the stars, then you'll understand what I'm going to do through your offspring. It's singular there, too. Look at the stars.
So shall your offspring be.
He's like, well, how do I know? How do I know that you're for real? And he says, go get me some critters. So he brings him some cows and some doves and all that kind of stuff. You know what happens next?
He cuts them in half. It's super bloody. That's why I asked Ashlyn to stop reading before we got to that part. He gets all these lovely little animals. He cuts them in half.
Because that's legally how they would make a covenant. They would make a promise, they'd make a contract. Before they could, like, really write and sign and keep records. What do you do? You cut these animals in half.
And then you get two parties in the middle of these dead animals, Blood all over the place. And that's where you vow, verbalize the terms of the promise, the terms of the covenant. And what you're saying is, if I don't keep my end of the bargain, then you make me like these. That's how they communicated the severity of what a covenant was. What's crazy, if you look at Genesis 15, he says, go get the critters.
Abram goes, gets the critters. And then he cuts them in half. He lays them out. And then he just waits. And he waits and he waits.
And God doesn't come. And God doesn't come. And then birds come. And so Abram has to chase him off the carcasses of the things. And then Abraham gets so tired, he takes a nap.
He falls asleep waiting for God to show up. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up, there's a fire pot, some smoking fire pot. There's some kind of symbol of God's presence that's going back and forth between these. These parts of the critters as he's verbalizing the terms of the promise that he's making. And what God is saying is, abraham, I don't need you for this promise.
I got it. I'll take the consequence if I don't deliver your go take a nap. This is a promise I'm making without needing you to really be involved. This is something I am doing on your behalf. What I need you to do, you've already done.
I need you to trust me.
God personally shows up to establish this covenant with Abraham. But when he mediates the law, when he gives the law to Moses, the testimony of Scripture is that there were angels involved in communicating that process. I don't know what that means. I wish I had more details. I just know that that's what it says.
There's angels are mediated. So God personally shows up for the thing with Abraham, but he sends angels to talk to Moses. Now, Moses is a pretty special dude, but, like, the boss showed up for Abraham. That seems like it's a pretty important contract, right? Sometimes bosses don't show up for things that you think are important that communicates something.
God says, I showed up for what I did with Abel.
God's plan includes temporary safeguards while he prepares permanent solutions. He's got a permanent solution for Abe, but in the meantime, we got distracted by all of these temporary safeguards. My question is, what temporary problems do we treat like permanent problems? What temporary problems do we treat as if they were permanent problems? What do we look at and go, lord, there's no way you can intervene.
There's no way this is going to go on forever. Why would you do this to me? Me, I'm suffering. And he's just temporary. This is just.
Hang on.
I got to sit this week with a room of pastors, some with more hair than me, even though they're older. It's crazy how God works in his grace. But as I was sitting listening to these older pastors, one of the things that one of them said, and he's probably one of the oldest in our district, he says, you know what, guys? If you can just hang on past 10 years, like, if you can just stay in the same place and serve and be faithful for 10 years, there's something that happens after you hit that Mark where, like, everything just starts to work better. It's not perfect.
It's still hard, but there's a. There's a trust between you and the congregation, and everybody's, like, working together, and it's really, really beautiful. He says, but it took me 10 years. And he says, you know when the hardest. You know, when I was most tempted to quit?
Year nine.
What temporary problems do we treat as if they were permanent? And can we trust that the Creator of the universe, who sees the beginning from the end, knows what you need today in year nine to bring you to year ten? God's plan includes temporary safeguards while he prepares permanent solutions. Wrap this Up. We'll read a little bit more in verse 23.
Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. God says here, God accepts us when we trust Jesus.
That's kind of the big idea for these verses. God accepts us when we trust Jesus. That's the way that we get in. And there was a time for these people in Galatia where they were making a transition from trusting in themselves and their ability to keep the law. And they're now putting their trust in Jesus, and now they're realizing God's accepted me.
But the temptation is, I really liked when I felt like I was contributing something. I really liked. Like, I felt like I was involved. And now Jesus is just taking care of it all. He says, yeah, he has taken care of it all.
Don't go backwards. The law was temporary. It was a guardian until Christ came. And Christ came and has adopted you, and so go with him. Can you imagine?
Can you imagine an orphan who is put into a foster system and moves from temporary placement to temporary placement to temporary placement until finally somebody adopts them and they get integrated in the family and they look at their family that's adopted them and say, actually, I want to go back to somebody who took care of me temporarily. He says, like, don't go back to what was before. Live in what Christ has done for you here.
The law was a guardian. It was a safeguard. It was temporary. But Jesus was cursed so that we can be blessed by adoption into God's family.
Now, before faith came, we were held captive under law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. That was the plan all along. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.
If we trust Jesus, then we are brought into his family. We are adopted into his family. We are accepted by God. We are justified before the holy, righteous Creator of the universe.
That's a bold claim, Michael. How can you make that claim? Jesus said it, man. It's not that I think I've got this figured out. It's not that I even think I really have a complete grasp on what it is that Christ has done, but I look at this and go, jesus, you understand the math that you're doing here in this algorithm, and I just trust you.
You say that I can be justified before holy, righteous God. I know the sin in my heart. You say you're going to deal with that. Okay, I think you're going to kill me in the process. No, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm going to take what's dead in you and pull that out and make you alive in Christ. For in Christ, you're all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. He says it's open to everybody.
Here's our chart. We got the covenant to Abraham and the inheritance. But then you got all these people who were like in the law, and their sin and their failure, their transgressions meant not that the law was bad, but that their inability to follow the law meant that they would die. Because the consequence of following, of not following the whole law, is death. So if you want to live in the law, then that means the result is do it perfectly or die.
Bummer. The good news is the plan always was for justification. The good news is for all the people who were under the law and under Moses, that all of the law was designed and written to point our attention to Jesus who was coming.
And when those who are under the law look to Jesus, they can trust Jesus and get on board with the inheritance. The law, which was categorized by separation and difference, by division, that parsed the line between Jew and Gentile, that articulated differences in processes for justification for men and for women, for legal standing, for slaves and for free people. Like all of this division and all this separation, all of that, if you want to be right with God, just come into Jesus. The only way that we're made right with God is if we trust Jesus to justify us. God accepts us when we trust Jesus.
The promise that is inherited by trust has always been God's desire. It's always been God's will. It's always been God's heart. His heartbeat has always been that he wants for wayward people to trust him. But he knows what we need and he provides.
And there was something that he needed to communicate to those people and to us by articulating the law doesn't mean the law was bad. It just meant that we were bad because we couldn't do it.
But we are heirs of the promise to Abraham if we are joined together with the ultimate recipient of the promise. Promise. Who is Jesus? I heard some of you whisper, who is Jesus is the ultimate heir of the promise to Abraham. And if you're with Jesus, you're brought into that promise.
No one is excluded from access to the family. No one is excluded from inheritance if they will come through Jesus. So what reasons do we give why Jesus shouldn't accept us?
What are the things that we hear that offer? We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear the Bible. Yeah, that's big idea, Michael. I get all that, but you don't know me. Here's five reasons why God shouldn't follow that prescription that He's.
That he's clearly laid out in His Word. Here's why I am the exception to that free offer, that I should be part of God's family. Don't you know how I have disgraced myself and my family in the past? Don't you know how I can't trust anybody? Don't you know how everything in my world seems to fall apart every time I touch it?
Like, don't you know? Don't you know? Don't you know? He knows. And he says, as many of you have put on Christ, have been justified before God.
What reasons do we give why Jesus shouldn't accept this? And my friends, let me just ask you, look at him closely and then look at them through the lens of what Jesus is saying here. Is that reason valid? Are those feelings telling you the truth or are they lying to you?
No one is excluded from access to the family or the inheritance.
Do you believe it?
If you believe it, will you preach it?
Will you tell somebody? Will you meet with somebody who's got all the excuses in the world about why God can't love them? And will you let them know?
Will you tell them no one's excluded? Will you tell them the door's open? Will you? Will you tell them that the invitation is for them, not for somebody else?
Because no one's excluded from access, but the access is exclusive, right? God doesn't have to make more than one way. In fact, he said there is only one way. Jesus says, I am the way. And so the message is for everybody.
It's not exclusive. Everybody can be included in the family of God, but it's exclusive in the sense that there's only one way to get brought in. And folks Most people don't know that. Our neighbors don't know that. Our family doesn't know that.
People at work don't know that. And if you know that and if you believe that, will you let them know? Will you be a witness?
Because there's a whole lot of people that we rub shoulders with that think that what we do here on Sunday mornings is I give you some more rules to follow, some more people to avoid, some more things that you have to do and make sure that you put your tithe in. That's what they think we're doing. They don't know. I'm telling you that you can be justified and accepted by the perfect, holy, righteous creator of the universe, and that he wants to fill you with his life so that you can walk in step with him, not just today, not just tomorrow, not just through a really, really difficult season, although he will do that, but for the rest of all of eternity.
God's plan includes temporary safeguards. But let's not get locked in on the temporary safeguards. Let us embrace the permanent solution that we have in Jesus, and let us invite our neighbors to also embrace him as the permanent solution to what's broken in me.
God. Thanks for your word, Lord. I know there's so many different ways that I can go wrong here. I know the limitations of my ability to communicate. And so, Lord, I pray that if there's something I've said that's confusing or wrong or imprecise or not helpful or just ask that you would wash all that stuff, stuff away.
And I pray that you would, by your spirit, bring your word to bear on our hearts.
Lord, if there's been truth that's been communicated today, Lord, I ask that it would not be something that we could just walk away from and forget, but that it would gnaw at us, it would haunt us this week as we go. I ask that your spirit would be at work, that you would convince us and convict us of what is wrong, convict us of sin. But, Lord, I pray too, that your spirit would convict us of what's right and what's good and what's true, and that we would trust that you have made a way and that you are the only way to be accepted to you, acceptable to you.
God, I thank you that you did make a way. You didn't owe us anything.
And so, Lord, I pray that we would embrace that gift. Lord, I pray that you'd give us the words to be able to communicate clearly to those who are far from you, that the gift is available that access is open, that there's room at the table of God's family for each and every person, regardless of how they grew up, regardless of where they came from, regardless of their nationality, regardless of what they've believed in the past, regardless of what they've done, regardless of who they've been. Lord, you invite each of us.
And Lord, I pray that if there's somebody today that wants to buy into that, that wants to get into your family, Lord, I pray that today would be the day that they surrender to you.
No fancy words, no magic spells, just God. I don't know how, but I want to trust you. Would you take me?
It's in Jesus name we ask. Amen.
LINKS
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
