Man, tonight I'm actually going to be preaching a little more out of the book of Galatians.
We're going to come back to Genesis 15 because this is going to be a key passage to understanding
what I'm going to show you tonight in Galatians.
But if you would go to Galatians chapter 3, and I'm going to be preaching tonight on what
I think is probably one of the most difficult parts of Galatians or kind of just a tough
couple of verses, and I hope that I'm going to be able to make it easy tonight and make
it simple and help us understand this important truth from Galatians chapter 3.
But the part that I want to focus on there in Galatians chapter 3 is starting in verse
19 where the Bible reads, Wherefore then serveth the law?
It was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise was
made and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.
That's kind of a difficult passage and especially verse 20 has perplexed a lot of readers over
the years, myself included.
But the title of my sermon tonight is not a mediator of one and I'm going to break this
down and we're going to see how the context does actually shed light on what is being
said here in verse number 20.
Now first of all, let's just back up a little bit to verse 15, get into the context here.
But the Bible reads in verse 15, Brethren, I speak after the manner of men, though it
be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man dissonaleth or addeth thereto.
What's he saying here in verse 15?
He's saying, look, even humanly speaking, speaking as just men speak, if there's a covenant
even just made between human beings, once you've made that agreement, if you're in construction,
you think of the contract being signed between say the general contractor and the electrician
or the customer and the general contractor.
Once that agreement is made and once it's confirmed, you can't just dissonal it or just
add to it, right?
You're going to need a special change order.
Nobody can just unilaterally just add to this thing or change this thing.
It's just not going to happen.
It's already been confirmed.
And so the Bible is saying that the same thing goes for the Abrahamic covenant.
The covenant that God made with Abraham was confirmed and it can't be disannulled or added
there unto just like human contracts and agreements.
Once you make the agreement, you got to stick to the terms of the agreement, right?
So it says in verse 16, now to Abraham and his seed where the promise is made, he saith
not unto seeds as of many, but as of one and to thy seed, which is Christ.
And this I say that the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law,
which was 430 years after cannot disannul that it should make the promises of none effect.
So here's what the Bible is saying.
Look, God made a covenant with Abraham and that Abraham covenant was that in him would
all families of the earth be blessed.
I'll make of you a great nation and your seed will all nations of the earth be blessed.
And we're going to look at those in detail in a moment in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15.
Also Genesis 22, it's reiterated.
But the point is that God made that covenant with Abraham.
The law does not change that covenant that God made with Abraham, okay?
That covenant with Abraham still stands.
The law coming 430 years after, right?
Because after Abraham, then you have Isaac, then you have Jacob, then you have the children
of Israel sojourning in Egypt for 400 years.
Then they go out of Egypt with Moses and then you have Moses receiving the law at Mount
Sinai.
So that's what he's saying with the 430 years there that 430 years later, the law doesn't
undo the covenant made with Abraham.
Everybody following so far?
It says it cannot disannul that covenant.
At the end of verse 17, it says that it should make the promises of none effect.
Now what does it mean when the Bible says that that Abrahamic covenant was confirmed
before of God in Christ?
Well because of course the promise is made to Abraham and his seed and his seed is Christ.
Back up just a little bit to verse six.
The Bible says even as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness,
therefore know ye that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham and the
scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before
the gospel and Abraham saying in thee shall all nations be blessed so then they which
be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.
So the covenant that's made with Abraham is a covenant that actually relates to the Lord
Jesus Christ because it's to Abraham and his seed which is Christ and that when the promise
was made to Abraham, it was a preaching of the gospel to Abraham when he said in thee
shall all nations of the earth be blessed because that was foreseeing that God would
justify the heathen through faith.
Now it says in verse 18 for if the inheritance be of the law, it's no more of promise but
God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Now let's go back to Genesis chapter 12 and just quickly look at this promise made to
Abraham.
In fact you can just turn to Genesis 15.
I'm going to read for you the famous verses from Genesis 12 if you want to get to chapter
15 but in chapter 12 verse 1 it says now the Lord had said unto Abram get thee out of thy
country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto a land that I will show
thee and I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name great
and thou shalt be a blessing and I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curse
with thee and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Here's what I want you to notice about this promise made to Abraham is how it is unconditional.
It's totally unconditional.
It's just God saying to Abraham I am going to do this for you.
I'm going to make you a great nation.
Now here's what he's not saying.
If you are faithful, if you keep my commandments, if you keep all my statutes and judgments,
if you live up to X, Y and Z I will do this.
This is a totally one sided deal.
God's just saying I'm going to do this for you period and it's totally unconditional.
As opposed to the law coming 430 years later has a lot of strings attached.
He says hey you're going to be a chosen people if you do X, Y and Z you're going to be my
you're going to inherit the land if you follow my commandments, if you keep my statutes,
if you continue to do these things.
There are all of these caveats given in the law where God is giving them their end of
the bargain.
He says I'm going to do this for you but you're going to do this.
You're going to follow these laws.
Totally different with the Abrahamic Covenant.
The Abrahamic Covenant is unconditional, one sided whereas the law of Moses, it's a two
way street right?
They have to keep the law in order for them to get the blessings and that's why by the
way the old covenant eventually ceases to exist because they broke their end of the
bargain Israel and Judah and so that's why the New Testament is able to totally supersede
the old covenant.
You see we talked a little bit earlier about contracting, you know construction and how
many of you have worked in construction and you can kind of relate to that illustration
about contracts and so forth.
Yeah a lot of guys are in that line of work or have been in the past and here's the thing
about that.
There's a material breach of contract that can take place where a violation is so egregious
that the covenant just becomes null and void and they can literally just go to a completely
different contractor and just like this contract is off, they can just switch companies.
Now look if a contractor makes like one little mistake or something that's called an immaterial
breach of contract and they can't just undo the whole covenant because of one little thing
but if the mistakes are big enough, if it's egregious enough, it's a material breach of
contract and the thing gets disannulled right because it's a two-way street.
The customer is going to pay the money, the contractor is going to do the work.
If the customer is not paying, deals off right I mean you know you got to pay for the work
and if the contractor is not doing the work or if he's doing it horribly or something
then it can be off.
So either side can screw this thing up if it's a serious enough infraction.
Does everybody understand?
That's how the Mosaic law is whereas the Abrahamic covenant is just this is what I'm going to
do for you Abraham and there's no strings attached.
Let me prove it to you further.
Go to Genesis 15 because Genesis 15 makes this very clear.
Look at verse number five.
It says, he brought him forth abroad.
This is God brings Abraham forth abroad and said, look now toward heaven and tell the
stars if thou be able to number them and he said unto him, so shall thy seed be.
There's a promise made to Abraham and he believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness.
Look at verse eight and he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit
it and he said unto him, take me in a heifer of three years old and a she goat of three
years old and a ram of three years old and a turtle dove and a young pigeon and he took
unto him all these and divided them in the midst.
Now this is very important.
He chops these animals in half, right?
So he's got these, uh, you know, uh, the she goat, he's got the ram and then he's got the
heifer and he's got the turtle dove and the pigeon and he cuts them in half except for
the birds.
They're too small.
So he doesn't chop them in half, but he chops these large animals in half and he laid each
piece one against another.
When the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away and when the sun was
going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram and low and horror of great darkness fell upon
him.
And he said, obviously God speaking unto Abraham, no of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger
in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them and they shall flick them 400 years.
And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge and afterward shall they come
out with great substance and thou shall go to thy fathers in peace.
Thou shall be buried in a good old age, but in the fourth generation they shall come hither
again for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.
And watch this key part here in verse 17 and it came to pass that when the sun went down
and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace and a burning lamp that passed between those
pieces.
So don't miss this.
Animals are chopped in half and then there's this vision of a burning lamp passing between
those severed carcasses of the animal.
It's very important and I'm going to get to what that means in a moment.
In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying unto thy seed have I given this
land from the river of Egypt unto the great river at the river Euphrates.
And of course ultimately we know that although there's a short term fulfillment of the children
of Israel inheriting that land, it's Christ that's in view as the main primary fulfillment.
Christ is going to be the one that causes Abraham to be a great nation because everyone
who has faith in Christ is a child of Abraham.
So the reason that God could show Abraham the stars and say your seed is going to be
like the stars of heaven, that's just not talking about his physical descendants.
He's talking about actually his spiritual seed, which is all of the believers in Christ
of all time are the sons of Abraham according to the Bible.
Now go to Jeremiah 34 and we're going to understand the significance of the lamp moving between
the pieces of the animal carcasses, right?
Let's see what the significance is.
And all of this is going to shed light on Galatians, believe me.
We're going somewhere with this so hang with me.
This is all the background that we're going to need in order to understand what we see
in Galatians.
We're comparing scripture with scripture.
Everybody understands so far, right?
Everything's working out, so let's stay with it.
Look at Jeremiah 34 verse 17.
Therefore thus sayeth the Lord, you've not hearkened unto me in proclaiming liberty,
everyone to his brother and every man to his neighbor.
Behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence
and to the famine, and I'll make you to be removed into all kingdoms of the earth.
And I will give the men that have transgressed my covenant, which have not performed the
words of the covenant which they made before me, watch this, when they cut the calf in
twain and passed between the parts thereof.
So notice, they made a covenant that they broke and God's angry.
Oh, that's right.
God doesn't feel much.
Yeah, he does.
God's angry because they broke the covenant and they made this covenant by cutting an
animal in pieces, right?
The calf, and they passed through the midst of those pieces as a sign of the agreement
that they were making, the deal that they were making.
The princes of Judah, look at verse 19, and the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs and
the priests and all the people of the land which passed between the parts of the calf.
I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, et cetera.
What are we talking about here?
This is a symbol of making an agreement, making a covenant.
Everyone who's a party to this covenant, let's say I'm making a deal with Fidel and we make
a solemn agreement, we make a covenant, then we chop the calf in half and Fidel and I would
both walk through that severed carcass as a symbol of the covenant that we're making,
that we're both signing our name to it.
Instead of a handshake or signing on the dotted line, everybody who's promising to
follow a certain agreement or covenant or contract, they're going to cut that animal
in half and they're going to go between the parts.
Now, in Genesis 15, we do not have Abraham walking through the animal parts.
He chops the animals in half, but only one party goes through and it's just God, right?
That vision of the burning lamp passing through those parts, that's God unilaterally alone
by himself confirming the covenant with Abraham because Abraham said, well, how do I know
you're going to do this?
And then God says, okay, well chop these animals in half.
He passes through the animal parts.
That's God saying, this is me signing on the dotted line.
This is my handshake.
This is my guarantee that I'm going to do what I've said that I will do.
But what I really want to emphasize to you is the one-sided nature of what we saw in
Genesis 15 because you don't see Abraham going through the parts of the animals.
Now let's go back to Galatians with all that background in mind.
So Galatians chapter three, now that we understand that, we're going to get into the difficult
part of the passage.
So all that was the preamble to these couple of verses that are a little bit hard in verses
19 and 20, but with this background, I think it's all going to make sense.
It's all going to be clear.
Okay.
Galatians chapter three verse 19 says, wherefore then serveth the law.
Now we just finished saying that the law coming 430 years after it can't disannul what covenant
was made with Abraham and it doesn't add to, it's not just a change order for the Abrahamic
covenant.
It's not an add on or an addendum, no, no, no.
It's a different covenant.
It's a separate covenant, right?
There's the Abrahamic covenant and then the Mosaic covenant, the covenant made at Mount
Sinai.
The law is totally separate and distinct from that.
It's a different agreement.
So if it does not augment or change the Abrahamic covenant, what is its purpose?
What is it doing, right?
The Bible says in verse 18, if the inheritance be of the law, it's no more of promise, but
God gave it to Abraham by promise.
Well then if the inheritance is not by the law, if the law doesn't do anything for the
Abrahamic covenant, if the law can't save you, if the law can't make you righteous in
the sight of God, if it can't justify you, what was the purpose of the law?
Why even have the law?
And he's going to answer that question.
He says, wherefore then serveth the law.
It was added because of transgressions.
Now what does that mean?
It was added because of transgressions.
Well, think about the fact that every time your kids do something crazy or something
stupid you say as a parent, okay, there's a new rule now, right?
When people do wrong, it leads to production of new rules because there are certain things
that you might have never even thought of and then they do that and then, okay, now
we need a new rule to keep people from doing that.
Now, if you remember a few weeks back, we talked about how Paul uses this illustration
where the law was the schoolmaster and so we can think of the law as a babysitter, right?
Because the Bible said that children are under tutors and governors and schoolmasters, right?
They have to be supervised.
They need a babysitter or a tutor or someone watching over them to keep them out of trouble
and also to train them up and to help their parents raise them and educate them and so
forth.
And so that's what the law was, right?
But then once the kid's grown up, he's no longer under the schoolmaster.
When he's a kid, he differs nothing from a servant.
He's got all these rules.
He's got somebody over him that's a governor, tutor, schoolmaster.
But then once he grows up and becomes an adult, now he's his own man and he's out making his
own decisions, right?
We talked about that.
And we talked about how your parents have all these rules but when you grow up, you're
not necessarily following all of your parents' rules.
You're going to follow the ones that are obviously absolute right and wrong.
You're going to follow the ones that are appropriate for an adult to follow.
But certain things that just it wouldn't make sense for me to follow some of the rules that
my parents have for me when I was a kid because those are rules that are for kids and I'm
not a kid.
I'm an adult now.
So I live by a different set of rules as an adult.
Well, here's the thing.
The law was added because of transgressions.
Basically mankind is committing all these sins and crimes and violations and doing all
these wrong things and so the law is put in place to try to whip man into shape and get
people doing right and to get people on track spiritually.
Now here's an illustration.
You remember when before the flood, the whole earth is filled with violence and then when
Noah gets off the ark, what does God say?
Who so shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed for in the image of God made
he men.
Well, here's the thing.
Before the flood, there was not a death penalty on murder but then the earth was so filled
with violence, after the flood God says, okay, new rule, death penalty for murderers, right?
Now that's not part of the Mosaic law obviously.
That's a separate deal but I'm just using that as an illustration of a law being added
because of transgressions or a rule being added because of transgressions and so the
law in general is a system that is a little bit of a micromanaging system.
I mean there's a lot of rules and it's pretty strict.
Just like when you're a kid, you are going to have a lot of strict rules that you live
by in your parents' house and your parents might micromanage certain parts of your life
whereas when you get a little bit older, you're going to have more freedom.
Now we could think of a lot of examples of this but let me give you one example that
I think can illustrate this for you and if you would, go to Deuteronomy chapter 7.
We'll be back in Galatians 3 but go to Deuteronomy chapter 7.
Wherefore then serveth the law, it was added because of transgressions, right?
So it's there to keep people on track or to give them a moral framework and to give
them rules that will keep them on the right path just like your parents have rules for
you and if you go to school, the school has all these rules and the worse the kids are,
the more rules the school is going to have and they're going to keep adding rules every
time the kids dream up new ways to be bad.
So one thing that we would do as parents is we wouldn't just let our kids hang around
with anyone.
So as a parent, we're not just going to let our kids just hang around with anyone.
We're not just going to just send them off somewhere to just pal around with who knows
who because we're worried about the influences that people could have on our kids, right?
So when we've got a 7-year-old, 8-year-old, even 12-year-old, even 14, even if our kids
are 15, 16 years old, we're going to say, we don't want you hanging around with the
drug crowd and we don't want you hanging around with these people or stay away from this particular
guy, stay away from this particular gal.
We are limiting you on who you can hang around with.
We want you to have Christian friends.
We want you to have wholesome friends.
We don't want you hanging around with weirdos.
But then that same kid, when he turns 18 years old, we are just going to send him off to
some job site to hang around with a bunch of plumbers and electricians and carpenters
who are just telling all kinds of filthy stories and living wicked lives.
At that point, it's just like, hey, you're an adult.
You have the freedom.
You're out there.
But you're assuming that the adult is going to have enough sense not to be influenced
by these guys.
But would you send your 10-year-old child around those same construction guys who are
doing all that graffiti in the porta potty with their Sharpie of all those obscene things
they're writing and drawing and everything?
You wouldn't want your 10-year-old hanging around with those guys.
But when he's an adult, you'd be like, well, he's an adult.
He's not going to get sucked in by these guys.
He's not going to be influenced by them.
He's smart.
Look, I worked around some pretty rough people and they never got me into their sin.
They didn't get me drinking and using drugs or going to the strip club or something, right?
But here's the thing.
A child, you would shelter from those things because they don't have the sense to know
what is right and wrong necessarily in these type of situations.
And they're more impressionable.
Well, here's the thing.
Before Christ came, spiritually, you know, mankind is under the school mask, especially
Israel.
But even all of humanity, in a sense, is not spiritually mature.
You could look at that illustration that Paul is using, right?
They're not an adult yet.
And so you have to have these strict rules.
So think about this.
Think about how God really wants to limit who the children of Israel hang out with.
Just like I use that illustration about saying, hey, you know, we don't want our kids hanging
around.
I mean, think about how God is really serious about them not mixing in with those heathen
nations in the land of Canaan and surrounding them.
You know, look at Deuteronomy, chapter seven, verse one.
It says, when the Lord thy God shall bring thee into the land, whether thou goest to
possess it and it cast out many nations before thee, he lists the nations.
Verse two, when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and
utterly destroy them.
Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them, neither shalt they make
marriages with them.
Thy daughter, thou shall not give unto his son nor his son shalt thou take unto thy son
for they will turn away thy son from following me that they may serve other gods.
So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you and destroy these suddenly, but thus shall
you deal with them.
You shall destroy their altars and break down their images and cut down their groves and
burn their graven images with fire for thou art and holy people in the Lord thy God.
Now here's the thing, is that the situation in the New Testament under the new covenant?
Now the morality hasn't changed.
Idolatry is just as wicked.
God is just as upset about false religion, but is God telling us today that we need to
just be totally separate from the heathen and that we need to just not even have any
of this idolatry or any of this false religion anywhere around us?
You know, in fact, God in the New Testament expects us to live in society, to be a part
of the world, not we're to be in the world, but not of the world.
We're to be shining lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation.
Okay.
But we are not as separated in the New Testament as we see with the children of Israel where
they're supposed to be totally separate from these wicked nations and have nothing to do
with.
In the New Testament, for example, the Bible talks about being invited over to some Gentiles
house who doesn't believe and just eating whatever they put before you.
As long as they don't say to you that it was sacrificed unto idols.
If they say, Hey, this is sacrificed unto idols, then you should say, well, I'm not
going to eat it then if that's how it's going to be.
But if the thing, but if the guy's an idolater and whatever and he puts food in front of
you, you don't have to be like, now, wait a minute, was this sacrifice to an idol?
As long as you don't know about it, what you don't know can't hurt you because the idol
has no power.
The idol's not real.
But if it's, if it's put in that context, then you know, you don't want to participate
in that.
It's sinful to participate when it's out there.
Hey, this is a sacrifice to an idols.
Then you're like, well, I'm not going to participate then.
I'm not going to eat this.
But the point that I'm making is there's no issue with going over to some guy's house
that's an idolater in the New Testament.
In fact, the Bible specifically says in 1 Corinthians 5 that, that God is not telling
us to separate from the fornicators of this world or the idolaters or the covetous or
the railers or the drunkards or the extortioners, but only if someone's called a brother.
If they're called a brother and they do those things with such and one know not to eat.
So we can eat with our coworker who's a fornicator.
We can eat with, we can go over to someone's house that's an idolater.
I mean, look, if my Hindu neighbor invited me over for dinner and he's got some false
God sitting on his porch and you know, my Hindu neighbor invites me over, you know what?
I can go over there to my Hindu neighbor's house and I can sit down and have dinner with
him though he's an idolater and God's not upset.
God's not displeased and I can be there.
I can witness to him and give him the gospel and God's not worried about me getting sucked
into his idolatry.
Why?
Because here's the thing.
In the New Testament, we are not the Old Testament nation of Israel.
We are New Testament believers.
We are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and so we are on a higher level spiritually in that
sense that we're not under the schoolmaster.
We're not the adolescents of the Old Testament.
We are adults spiritually in the New Testament and God expects us to be responsible in this
world and to be able to be exposed to idolatry and to be around the things of this world
without just all of a sudden getting into idolatry like the Old Testament nation of
Israel is always getting mixed up in idolatry all the time, right?
Whereas those of us that are saved, the chances of us getting mixed up in idolatry are pretty
slim.
It's possible, pretty unlikely.
What about the Roman Catholics?
Look at all their idols.
They're not saved.
They don't believe in salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.
They believe in workspace salvation.
They're not saved.
So of course they're just indulging in all kinds of idolatry, all kinds of superstitious
pagan mumbo jumbo, but that's because they're not saved.
Those of us that are saved, I mean, we're really not in much danger of that.
Now here's the thing.
The morality hasn't changed.
I mean, idolatry is still just as wrong in the New Testament as it is in the Old Testament.
Here's another way of putting it.
You know, when you give kids a chore to do, you have to really break it down for them.
You know, I was talking to Pastor Jimenez about this and this was the illustration that
he came up with.
He said, you know, you tell your kids to take out the trash and you got to tell them, you
know, hey, if there's any trash on the ground around, you know, pick up that trash too and
put it in the bag and take out the trash and make sure that the lid closes, you know, and
you're giving a lot more instruction and you're, and then they're still probably less likely
to do as good of a job as an adult would do an adult.
You just say, take out the trash and hopefully the adult is going to be proactive about some
of these other things and, and figuring it out.
You know, if you went to a job and they told you to take out the trash, they're not going
to sit there and give you all these instructions.
So here's what adults typically do.
Adults need less supervision, less rules, but they're held to a higher standard.
So it's not that God has relaxed the standard in the New Testament.
It's not that, oh, you know, in the Old Testament, God had all these strict rules, but man, the
New Testament, it's just, we're free in Christ.
It's just anything goes, hang loose, baby.
That's not what we're talking about.
What we're saying is that in the New Testament, God doesn't have to micromanage us as much
as he would have micromanaged the Old Testament saints.
Why?
Because we have the Holy Spirit and if we walk in the Spirit, we're not going to fulfill
the lust of the flesh.
You know, God is giving less rules in the New Testament.
Hey man, two rules.
Love the Lord your God, love your neighbor.
There you go.
You know, like less rules are going to get us to the destination of still fulfilling
the righteousness of the law, still, you know, still not being idolaters or fornicators or
drunks or adulterers, but we don't need the same level of supervision that a child needs.
Well, New Testament believers don't need the same level of micromanagement and supervision
as the Old Testament saints who were spiritually minors.
We've reached an age of spiritual majority in the New Testament.
Christ has come.
We've got the Holy Spirit to guide us.
That gives us an advantage that we have here in the New Testament that the Old Testament
saints didn't have.
And so what do we see in Galatians?
Let's go back to Galatians 3.
We're getting into the meat of what I want to preach on here in verses 19 and 20.
It says, Wherefore then serveth the law?
It was added because of transgressions, right?
Because you've got to have rules in order to keep people in line that are constantly
breaking the rules, that are constantly doing bad things.
You've got to keep adding all these rules.
So God has a lot of rules, a lot of structure, a lot of things for them to follow.
And then it says, until, right, till the seed should come, Christ obviously, to whom the
promise was made.
And again, it's not that all of a sudden morality doesn't matter.
It's just that we don't need to be under the law in the New Testament.
Being under grace, we can still fulfill the righteousness of the law without as strict
of a set of specific rules of do's and don'ts.
It doesn't give us license to go out and violate the morality of the Old Testament.
That's not what we're saying.
But we're saying that God gives us more leeway and more freedom and more liberty in the New
Testament to fulfill the righteousness of the law.
He expects more, but there's less micromanagement, supervision, and rules.
Okay.
He expects more in the New Testament.
I mean, you don't see a relaxing of God's expectation.
God expects us to be more righteous in the New Testament that, you know, you see some
of the stuff these guys in the Old Testament did, and you're kind of like, Whoa, God, let
them get away with that.
But that doesn't mean God's going to let you get away with that because you're, you're
an adult.
I'd expect that kind of behavior from a child, but you're an adult.
He expects more from you.
So he says, till the seed should come to whom the promises was made.
And it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
This is another kind of tough part.
What is this, right?
It was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
And then here's the really puzzling verse to a lot of people.
Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.
Now here's the thing.
Verse 20 is really easy to understand right on the surface.
It's not what it's saying that's the issue with this because I think anybody can read
this and get the gist of what it's saying.
That's not what's controversial.
That's not what's confusing.
It's more like, why are you saying this at this time?
It almost seems just a little random.
And it's almost such a self-explanatory statement that it's almost like just, oh, by the way,
the sky's blue.
By the way, water is wet.
It's easy to understand, but it's kind of hard to understand why you're bringing that
up right now.
Why are you bringing this up?
Why are you stating this obvious fact apropos of nothing?
Well, it's not apropos of nothing.
It actually fits perfectly with the context based on what we've been seeing and what we've
been talking about.
And I'm going to try to bring that together for you right now.
What is the just surface meaning here of verse 20?
A mediator is not a mediator of one.
What is a mediator?
A mediator is a go between.
How can you have a go between if there's only one party?
A mediator is not a mediator of one.
It's like, okay, I'm Steven Anderson and I have a mediator.
Well, I mean, the question is, well, who's your issue with?
Oh, I've hired a mediator.
You know, you have an issue with someone, you have a beef with somebody, the laws.
No, I just, it's just for me, it's just, I just, I just have a mediator for me.
Well, mediator is not a mediator of one.
You know?
Well, who's the other party in the mediation?
Nobody.
It's just me.
You think I was insane.
You think I was crazy because obviously a mediator is not a mediator of one.
There have to be two parties.
You got to mediate between this person and this person.
Does everybody understand?
But God is one.
Now here's another kind of just self-explanatory, obvious statement that God does not need a
mediator between himself and himself.
We don't need a mediator between the father and the son or the son and the Holy Ghost,
obviously.
Okay.
God is only one party in a mediation.
Does everybody understand what I mean?
So you say, look, a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God's only one party here.
God's only one in this mediation.
So who's the other guy if we have a mediator?
Now stop and think about situations where we do have a mediator.
The Bible tells in the New Testament that there's one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus.
Jesus is the mediator and you got two parties here.
You got Jesus in the middle of whom?
God and man.
One mediator between God and man.
So you got God the father, you got men and you got the mediator of Jesus Christ.
Now there are two parties because guess what?
Our election in the New Testament is not unconditional election.
We're not Calvinists.
We don't believe in unconditional election.
There is a condition to our election.
It's that we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's it.
There's no work involved.
It's not of works that any man should boast, but it's a faith.
And in order for us to be saved, we have to believe in Jesus.
If we believe in Jesus, right?
That's our side of the bargain.
God's side of the bargain is that he will save us eternally and we can never lose our
salvation.
All of our sins are forgiven and forgotten and it's a done deal.
We're passed from death unto life.
We shall not come into condemnation.
No man can pluck us out of the Father's hand.
We are sealed by the Holy Ghost unto the day of redemption.
He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
But there is a condition to get in on this benefit of salvation.
You have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that everybody could go to heaven.
No, no, no.
That whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
And so in the New Testament, we have a mediator.
New Covenant, New Testament, there's a mediator, Jesus, right?
And Jesus Christ makes intercession to the Father for us, right?
He ever liveth to make intercession for us.
And that's not even just only in regard to our salvation but even just in our day-to-day
lives Christ liveth to make intercession for us and we can come to the Father through Jesus
the Son, right?
We can pray directly to the Father and Christ has opened that door for us.
He has bridged that gap for us between us and God, right?
Does everybody understand that?
So it's pretty easy to see how Jesus is, he's not a mediator of one, God's one and then
man is the other.
Boom, mediator makes sense.
What about the Mosaic law?
Well guess what?
The Mosaic law, according to verse 19, was also ordained in the hand of a mediator.
Was there a mediator in the Old Testament?
The New Testament mediator is Jesus.
The Old Testament mediator was Moses.
The law was given by Moses.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
You see, God did not make this covenant directly, the whole thing wasn't given directly to the
children of Israel but rather Moses ended up being a mediator, didn't he?
And he went between God and the people.
And God spoke to Moses, Moses spoke to the people, Moses spoke to the people, he took
that to God and Moses acted as a mediator there at Mount Sinai.
The law was given by Moses.
Who's the ultimate source of the law?
It's not like Moses sat around and dreamed up the laws.
We call it the law of Moses, not because Moses dreamed it up.
God is the author of the Old Testament law but rather it's that Moses was the mediator
in whose hand the law was when it was given.
Does everybody understand?
New Testament, New Covenant mediators Jesus, New Covenant mediated by Jesus, the Old Covenant
was mediated by Moses.
Moses was that go-between when it was ordained.
But then another tricky part here is that it says it was ordained by angels in the hand
of a mediator.
What do angels have to do with this?
Go back and read the story in Exodus.
You can read all about the giving of the law on Mount Sinai and you know, you're not going
to find angels being involved in that story of the giving of the law.
I mean, you're going to see Moses going up on Mount Sinai and coming down, talking to
the people, a lot of back and forth, covenants, commandments, all these different things.
You know, you're not going to see angels in the sense of supernatural beings that we would
think of as angels, right?
But here's what you have to understand is that the word angel in the Bible is not always
referring to a supernatural being.
Many times the word angel in the Bible is simply referring to a messenger because that's
what the word angel literally means.
You know, the Bible calls even Jesus Christ, the messenger of the Lord of hosts in the
book of Malachi and elsewhere it calls him the angel of the Lord.
He's not, he's not an angel as we would think of angels as a classification of a being,
but he's a messenger of the, of the covenant.
Okay.
In the New Testament, here's a perfect example, revelation chapter two and three unto the
angel of the church of Ephesus, unto the angel of the church of Sardis.
Are we talking about supernatural beings like a special angel assigned to these churches?
No, we're talking about the preacher, the messenger, the one who brings the message,
the tidings giver.
You know, it's funny if you look up revelation two and three in the Tyndale New Testament,
which is sort of like the rough draft for the King James.
Obviously the King James is far superior.
Tyndale is one guy, but he provided a great rough draft for our English Bible.
The King James Bible is the final draft.
This is the authoritative text.
Okay.
But it's just interesting sometimes to look back at that even more archaic Bible that
was almost a hundred years earlier from Tyndale.
And it's funny because he translates the word angel different for all seven churches, which
it's the same word in Greek and the King James Bible just says the angel of the church of
Ephesus, the angel church of Smyrna, angel of the church of Pergamos, angel.
But uh, you know, Tyndale is getting really creative and so he's like to the angel of
the church of Ephesus, the messenger of the church of Smyrna, the tidings bringer, the
one who brings the message.
Like he says it like seven different ways.
It's kind of funny.
But the point is that you can point to scriptures in the Bible where the word angel is for sure
referring to just a human being acting as a messenger.
It's not always a supernatural being.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes it isn't.
In fact, I preached a whole sermon called angels that are human.
And then I preached another sermon called angels that are not human.
That was a Sunday morning and a Sunday night little mini series, angels that are human,
angels that are not human.
And there are both uses of this word.
The word angel simply means messenger.
The word apostle means messenger, you know.
And so there is a time and a place for this word to be used just as a messenger, just
as somebody who's sent with a message, not a supernatural being.
And here's the thing, we've got to let context be our guide.
And I've seen all kinds of wild theories about this verse, about how like, you know, these
angels are the angels by whom the law was given or ordained, it was, it was demons.
I've seen that theory out there or, or that it was, or just all kinds of wild theories
about how the angels were involved.
But shouldn't we let Exodus speak for itself and, and Deuteronomy.
I mean, we have the story, we know what happened.
There just aren't any of those kinds of angels.
They just aren't in the story.
If you read Exodus, they're not there.
So if we let scripture define scripture, what do we do with this?
Because I don't believe for one second that we're talking about supernatural beings here.
I believe we're talking about messengers, messengers.
So with that in mind, let's think about this.
The law was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator, by angels in the hand of a
mediator.
What, what's Paul's point?
What's the whole context?
The whole context was comparing and contrasting the Abraham covenant with the Mosaic covenant.
Wasn't that our original context?
Isn't that what we were talking about?
That's one colossal difference between the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant.
The Abrahamic covenant is one sided.
Remember how the lamp of fire passed between the animal parts all by itself?
You remember how it was just a one sided thing where God made promises to Abraham with no
strings attached and he doesn't have an end to the bargain.
Just God's just saying, this is what I'm going to do, unconditional.
And so what God's emphasizing about the Mosaic law is that it's actually ordained by angels
in the hand of a mediator, meaning that they're actually two degrees of separation between
man and God in this covenant because you've got basically angels, which are messengers
that are appointing the law, basically establishing the law, setting it up, putting it into practice,
teaching the people saying, okay guys, this is what we're going to do.
This is what God has ordained.
This is what God has appointed.
These are the laws.
You know, you could think of that in general as priests and Levites and so forth, but you
know, even in the text of Exodus itself, you have, and in Numbers you have what?
The 70 elders, you know, where God basically says, okay, if this is too much for you, Moses,
to do all this, here are 70 people so that the people, instead of going straight to you,
Moses, who do the people go to?
They go to the 70 elders, right?
And then they can deal with them and you have 70 helpers, 70 other people to help you out.
And then of course there's also the structure put in place of the whole bureaucracy of rulers
of tens, rulers of hundreds, rulers of thousands.
So there are messengers that are preaching God's law, executing God's law, teaching God's
law, appointing God's law, ordaining God's law, putting God's law into practice and getting
people to know it and do it and so forth.
And so you've got Moses between the people and God and then you've got 70 elders between
Moses and the people and you can see how there's a separation there, whereas the Abrahamic
covenant is just God talking to Abraham just directly.
See the difference?
The Abrahamic covenant is just God dealing directly with Abraham.
No mediator.
You want to know why there's no mediator because a mediator is not a mediator of one.
If Abraham has no end of the bargain to perform, if there's no requirement being put on Abraham,
what do you need a mediator for?
God's just saying, here's what I'm going to do.
I mean, look, if I walked up, you know, I used Fidel a minute ago.
If I walked up to Fidel and said, here's what I'm going to do, Fidel, totally, regardless
of what you are going to do, I'm going to go down to In-N-Out Burger.
I'm going to get you 12 patties and I'm going to bring them to you in a box.
I'm going to hand them to you.
Do we need a mediator to broker this deal?
I'm just giving you these patties, man.
Just he's just like, cool.
There's no dispute.
There's no referee needed to make sure that now what if I said, hey, you know, you're going to give me $14.40 and then I'm going to go
down there and get the 12 patties and I'm going to bring you the patties and I'm going to give you the $14, or you're going to give me
the $14.40, I'm going to give you the patties.
You know, what if this deal goes horribly wrong and he just grabs the patties and runs with them?
Now we're going to need a mediator.
You know, we're going to need some arbitration here, right?
And we're going to need to figure this out because, you know, he had an end to the bargain.
I had an end to the bargain.
You know, what if I just take his money and I just go and get myself two double doubles, fries, a Neapolitan milkshake, and I'm just eating
all that and I come back and he's like, whoa, what happened?
I'm just like, well, you know, I got hungry.
I'm sorry.
This deal could go wrong.
Somebody might not fulfill their end to the bargain.
And so a mediator makes sense.
Now, when it comes to the children of Israel, yeah, the children of Israel need to be filled in on their end of the bargain, right?
And then, of course, God is going to do his part.
They're going to do their part.
And, you know, just as I would have to say to Fidel, hey, this is the deal.
You know, I'm going to bring you this food, but you got to give me this money and we got to make an agreement.
You know, that's the difference.
And so a mediator is not a mediator of one, which is why the Abrahamic Covenant didn't need a mediator.
There wasn't a mediator involved because it's just a one-sided, just a unilateral, it's just unconditional promises made.
Abraham, in you, all families of the earth are going to be blessed because Jesus Christ is going to come no matter what.
Jesus Christ is going to come and die on the cross no matter what.
That was already promised back in Genesis 3.15 that Christ is going to come.
It's not like, well, as long as mankind doesn't screw it up too bad, I'll send Christ to save you.
He's sending Christ no matter what.
Christ is going to come and die on that cross no matter what.
And Christ is going to inherit the kingdom no matter what.
He's going to rule and reign one day on this earth no matter what.
Nothing can change that.
Nothing can change the fact that Jesus Christ will save millions of people and Abraham's seed is going to be like the stars of heaven.
But for the individual to be saved, there's a condition.
You've got to believe.
That determines which ones go and which ones don't.
But in general, the fact that Christ is coming, the seed of Abraham, that he's going to inherit everything, that the whole world is going to be blessed, that all nations are going to be blessed, all families are going to be blessed is a done deal.
Because God promised it, he will fulfill what he said.
You know, even if mankind didn't even cooperate in every possible way, he said, well, you know, if these people weren't praising me to fulfill prophecy, then even the stones would cry out.
God's going to find a way to get it done when he promises something, he's going to get it done.
Whereas the old covenant, yeah, he'll get it done if they do their end of the bargain.
That had a condition.
That had a mediator.
And so it does not, the old covenant does not supersede the Abrahamic covenant.
It doesn't replace it, add on to it, change it.
Because in some ways, the Abrahamic covenant is superior because the Abrahamic covenant can't go wrong.
Because who screws things up, God or man?
Only man can screw it up.
And since man isn't involved in the Abrahamic covenant, it can't get screwed up.
No mediator required.
Because a mediator isn't a mediator of one.
God is one and God's the only one who's involved.
That's why there's no mediator.
Whereas Old Testament, Mosaic law, that covenant, yeah, it was in the hands of a mediator.
And there was even a second degree of separation because it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.
And so you've got Moses and then you've got Moses' messengers, the people that are taking messages for him and so forth.
And there's that separation, that gulf there.
I hope that all makes sense.
Let me just quickly wrap up with the passage here.
So it says in verse 20, no mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one.
Verse 21 is the law then against the promises of God?
God forbid.
It's not that the old covenant or the Mosaic covenant is somehow working against the Abrahamic covenant.
It's not that it's against it or ruining it or messing it up or in opposition and the two are against it.
They're not against it.
They're both part of God's plan.
Even though we say that the Abrahamic covenant is superior and lasts forever, whereas the Mosaic covenant is temporary, conditional, no longer in force.
It ended almost 2000 years ago.
You know, the law is not against the promises of God, but you can see how someone would think that after reading Paul kind of be negative about the law in that way.
Is the law against the promises of God?
Well, God forbid.
For if there had been a law which could have given life, verily, righteousness should have been by the law.
He said, look, you know, it's not that the law is against the promises of God.
It's just the law can't save you.
It can't give you life.
Righteousness isn't going to come by the law.
That's the issue.
But the scripture has concluded all under sin that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to all to them that believe.
But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up under the faith which afterward should be revealed.
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us into Christ that we might be justified by faith.
But after that faith has come, we're no longer under a schoolmaster.
So the law served a purpose.
First of all, it was added because of transgressions.
So it could it was there to try to keep people in line.
Now, obviously, it didn't necessarily succeed at doing that because man screwed it up.
But what did the law accomplish?
The law really showed us our sins.
It really showed human beings that they can't live up to God's standard of righteousness, because when God gives us specific rules, we can't follow him.
We end up breaking them.
We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God.
So the law showed us our need for Christ by showing humanity's moral failings.
It was added because of transgressions.
I think the primary meaning there when he says it was added because of transgressions is to deal with transgressions.
You know, people screw up.
You got to keep making new rules.
But also, you could even see how it actually increased transgressions, because if there are more rules, there are going to be more violations.
You know, if you start having a bunch of really specific rules, you're going to have more violations than if you have few rules because people are sinners.
They're just going to be violating these ordinances and statutes all over the place.
So it actually increased sin in that sense by just making more rules.
There's just more opportunities to sin.
If there are more commandments, there are more commandments to break.
And so it showed the moral bankruptcy of humanity.
It showed the inability of humans to follow God's law.
It showed that law can't give you righteousness because because nobody born under the law outside of, of course, the Lord Jesus Christ, nobody followed the law and showed, hey, if I can just follow this law, I can be a righteous person.
I can make it to heaven.
Nobody followed that law.
Jesus followed it, of course, because he's the son of God.
But I'm saying just normal human beings, you know, so what did the law do?
It showed us our sinful condition.
It showed us our need for a savior.
And that's where we are now.
And so it says here that now the faith has come.
We're no longer under schoolmaster for you're all the children of God by faith in Christ.
Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.
There's neither Jew nor Greek.
There's neither bond nor free.
There's neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus.
So when it comes to being the people of God, it's about being in Christ.
If you're Abraham Seed, you're in.
You're the people of God.
Now, what are the enemies saying?
Just to bring it back to the greater context of of Galatians, they're saying, well, OK, you're saved, whatever, but you got to be circumcised in order to be a full fledged member of God's people.
In order to be in the community, in order to be in the church, you know, to be all the way in, you've got to get circumcised.
You've got to keep the law and so forth.
And what what God's saying here is that, no, just by believing in Christ, you're you're a child of God.
By believing in Christ, you're a child of Abraham.
And, you know, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, bond or free, we're all baptized by one spirit into one body, it says in First Corinthians.
And so we all join the same church.
We don't have a Jew church and a Gentile church, right?
We have one church for everybody, House of Prayer for All Nations.
And as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there's neither Jew nor Gentile, Jew nor Greek, you know, same thing as saying Jew nor Gentile, just, you know, doesn't matter.
You're still a member.
You don't need circumcision to make you full fledged or to take you to the next level.
There's neither bond nor free, right?
Doesn't matter whether out there in the world, maybe you're a literal slave out there in the world, but in church, you're on the same level as the master, rich, poor.
Everybody's on an equal footing spiritually in the church, and he says there's neither male nor female, right?
Meaning that, you know, think about only men could get circumcised.
First of all, you know that, you know, unless you're a freaking pervert, there's no such thing as female circumcision.
Unless you're one of these Muslim weirdos or whatever that do this stuff, a bunch of freaks.
But anyway, you know, well, only men can get circumcised, right?
So, you know, where does that leave women in the New Testament church?
Well, guess what? Circumcision is not even a thing in the New Testament.
We don't get circumcised.
And so and there's no male or female.
Now, obviously, outside the church, the servant is still supposed to obey his master.
The Bible commands that.
Obviously, the wife is supposed to obey her husband.
Obviously, there are roles socially that God commands us to abide by.
But when it comes to our standing in Christ, women are just as saved as men.
Women are just as spiritual as men.
It's not like men are a little bit more spiritual than women.
No, men and women both have equal standing in Christ, just like Jew and Gentile have equal standing, just like bond and free have equal standing.
And if we're Christ, we're Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
Let's bow our heads in that word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this passage, Lord, and we're thankful for our standing in Christ.
And thank you so much for that Abrahamic covenant that we are in on.
And Lord God, thank you for the new covenant, the better covenant established on better promises with a better mediator.
And Lord, there are so many wonderful things about the new covenant.
We barely even touched on it tonight, but I pray that we would all have an understanding of this important scripture, realizing that salvation is by faith, that faith gives us everything, salvation, and it makes us a full-fledged member of your chosen people.
And Lord God, help us all to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Help us to walk in the spirit.
Since we're not under the law, Lord, help us to walk in the spirit and fulfill that righteousness of the law without being under the law.
In Jesus' name, we pray.
Amen.