Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

Feb 11, 2018

Freed from the Law

Passage: Galatians 3:15-25

Speaker: Ben Seneker

Series: Galatians

Category: Grace Brevard

Keywords: freedom, law

Our lives are full of both promises to us and expectations of us. We hope in the former while we try to live up to the latter. How often, though, does life feel like a profound imbalance in the direction of the expectations--or, worse, with the absence of promises that sustain us in hope? Paul will take pains in this passage to make a distinction between God’s promise--in particular the one to Abraham--and God’s Law--His expectations, if you will, of our response to Him. Paul clarifies their relationship to one another and the role each plays in how we relate to God. Why should we care? Because only by a sense of His promise can we ever understand, much less live into, His expectations.

Featured Illustration

Order of Worship

Call To Worship: Psalm 19:7-10;14 ESV

Songs: 

Prelude - Once And For All

Holy is the Lord

No Longer Slaves

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

O Praise the Name

Reading: Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV

Central Text: Galatians 3:15-25 ESV

15 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. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham 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. 17 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. 18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. 19 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. 20 Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. 21 Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. 23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian,

Response: Romans 8:1-4 ESV

Benediction: Hebrews 10:23 ESV

Discussion Questions:

  1. What are the promises you have in life (legal, personal, implied etc)?
  2. What do broken promises do? Give examples of you breaking a promise and a promise being broken against you.
  3. What is the promise God has given to us? What is it based upon and what is it NOT based upon? Can God break his promise? Do you feel/act like he can or he can’t?
  4. Everything has been imprisoned under sin: what does that say about our power and freedom outside of Christ and his Grace?
  5. We were also imprisoned by the “Law”
    1. What is “The Law”? (also see Jesus’ summary in Mark 12)
    2. What then were and are the “uses” of the Law?
    3. How can understanding the extent of the Law make you more appreciative of Jesus and what he did on our behalf?
    4. What then is our motivation to love/behave now that we are in him?

Docs & Quotes:

  • “The law orders, that we, after attempting to do what is ordered, and so feeling our weakness under the law, may learn to implore the help of grace.” - Augustine
  • We know exactly how and where we can be hurt, and why. That is as good a definition as any of self-consciousness. We are aware of our own defenselessness, finitude and mortality. We can feel pain, and self-disgust, and shame, and horror, and we know it. We know what makes us suffer. We know how dread and pain can be inflicted on us - and that means we know exactly how to inflict it on others. We know we are naked, and how that nakedness can be exploited - and that means we know how others are naked, and how they can be exploited. - Jordan B. Peterson
  • "’Are the gods not just?' 'Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?’" - C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
  • The law orders, that we, after attempting to do what is ordered, and so feeling our weakness under the law, may learn to implore the help of grace. - Augustine
  • ...man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refused to have anything as a gift. - Josef Pieper
  • A healthier faith seeks a reference point outside of all human experience, the Polestar which marks the course of all human events, not forgetting that impenetrable mystery of the interplay of God's will and man's … We are sinners. And we are buffoons … It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God's and the call is God's and everything is summoned by him and to his purposes.  Elisabeth Elliot

Uses of the Law - https://www.ligonier.org/blog/threefold-use-law/

  • Its first function is to be a mirror reflecting to us both the perfect righteousness of God and our own sinfulness and shortcomings. As Augustine wrote, “the law bids us, as we try to fulfill its requirements, and become wearied in our weakness under it, to know how to ask the help of grace.”
  • A second function, the “civil use,” is to restrain evil. Though the law cannot change the heart, it can to some extent inhibit lawlessness by its threats of judgement,
  • Its third function is to guide the regenerate into the good works that God has planned for them (Eph. 2:10).

What is the Law (in the OT) - The Three Laws: (all accomplished by Jesus)

  • Ceremonial
  • Civil
  • Moral

Sermons:

Why Then the Law by John Piper

Galatians 3:19-22

The Doctrine of the Word by Tim Keller

Psalm 19:1-14

The Doctrines of Grace Do Not Lead to Sin by Charles H. Spurgeon

Romans 6:14-15 

Media

2.11.18 Album