This is the Truth Network. Forever, thy word is settled in heaven. Psalm one, nineteen, verse eighty-nine. I'm Stu Epperston. Welcome to the special Wednesday in the Word Leader podcast, where we prepare to equip our leaders of this special Bible study outreach breakfast.
Every week to teach through the scriptures. Thirteen Dario locations. There's a men's group meeting, and several of the locations host the women on Thursday morning. Stay tuned. Be encouraged as we jump into this week's Wednesday in the Word.
What is Hell's best kept secret?
Well, that's the title of a book that was given to me my freshman year in college. And it changed my whole perspective of evangelism. The book was written by Ray Comfort, an evangelist from New Zealand. He came back with a revised version called Revival's Golden Key. Both titles fit because there's a tool you can use that will change how you evangelize that God has given us.
It's the law, and we're going to learn about the purpose of the law today. A schoolmaster, a guard, a guide. Doctor Sam Horn, this thing just keeps building and building, doesn't it, sir? With a beautiful picture of God's grace, but then a clear roll of what the law does, and the law does not save. But we find out its purpose this week in these verses in chapter three of Galatians, verses nineteen through twenty-nine.
Yeah, so you know, as we our time last time together, we really came up on a big, big question because we we've been listening to Paul now for for three and a half chapters, and we're finally at the place where he explained to us how the promise of Abraham comes through a particular descendant, the Messiah. And what that descendant is going to bring—a righteousness that isn't by the law.
So, he he made the point earlier in the in the text, verses fifteen through eighteen, that that what God gave to Moses did not invalidate an earlier covenant that He made with Abraham. And and the whole point that God is after is not to make children of Moses, but to make children of Abraham. And children of Abraham are never made by the law; they're always the result of promise. They're always children of the promise. And so we ended our time with this big question that we kind of left out there as a teaser, and that is: Well, if the law can't help us to become a true son of God or a true daughter of God, why did God give us the law?
And so Paul's going to answer that question in verse nineteen. What purpose does the law serve? And and I think there's a couple of things that that he says right off the bat in nineteen and twenty. He tells us that the law was added. In other words, this was not God's original design.
The law was added, and he tells us why the law was added. The law was added because of transgressions. Our sin nature causes us to step over God's stated will, and that's why we need the law. the The law is going to do a function for us, and so it was added. And then, secondly, there is a temporary time frame to the law.
It was added until. And that's the next big word, right? It was added, and then it was added until, and the until is going to take us all the way to the arrival of the offspring. We already, we already found out what. Paul was talking about when he when he talks about the offspring because he brought it up in verse sixteen.
He said God made a promise to Abraham's offspring, and he and he doesn't talk about offspring in the plural. He talks about offspring in the singular. There is a specific descendant that's going to get the promise, and it's Messiah. And until he arrives and brings the promise. Everybody is under the law, and so the law was added until the offspring would come to whom the promise had been made.
And then the third thing, it had an intermediary, and the intermediary was somebody who stood before Israel and before God, and mediated this covenant. And we know that it was Moses, but. The intermediary implies more than one, but God is one, and that's an odd way to say what God, what Paul is saying here. He's saying, listen, when when God gave us the promise, He gave us the promise directly. When He gave us the law, He gave us the law through Moses.
There's something that stands between God and His people, and it's Moses. And when the promised offspring arrives, He removes that intermediary and grants us direct access to God.
So that's that's interesting. The law was added because of our transgressions, and and the promise was given directly by God through His Son.
So that's the first thing I would see there, Stu. Yeah, yeah, and and I love how you take us through, you know, the verses, helping our teachers, our leaders of Wednesday in the Word, kind of see how the the structure flows through this text. This is, see, these are ten or eleven key verses rounding out chapter. Three of Galatians. We're in the doctrinal section.
Dr. Horn has set this up for us each week. You know, first, first part of the book, first two chapters is personal. Second two chapters is doctrinal. Final, you know, part is more practical.
You know, but we're in the middle of, we're in the teeth of the doctrinal section. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And Dr. Horn, this this chapter opened up with you know a a very strong Chastisement, a very strong rebuke, a loving, godly rebuke. You foolish Galatians, who's bewitched you?
How could you let these Judaizers bring Moses in to to a salvation thing that's only by faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone? And then he, he, you know, then then this he sets on to say, hey, there's a curse of the law of Moses. The law will bring a curse because You know that you know Jesus came to redeem us from the curse of the law. That's why He came.
So if the this law, if the law plus grace, if the law plus faith could save you, the devil always mingles it. The Judaizers mingled it. They never, they never denied faith, right? They never denied grace.
Well said. They never denied Christ. Exactly right. Yeah, they try to. You know, they try.
The devil is the makeup artist, king of the world, and he's also he's also the the king of deception. He's also the king of a simulation. He tries to synthesize a. Lie with the truth, and that's what the Galatian heresy is.
So, Dr. Horn, this takes us into something so critical, and you you already kind of started into it. This this role of the law and it's got a strategic role, and it's on a fundamental, simple way. I want to when we get to Tudor, I want to talk a little bit about how I set the whole thing up. But but take us into this because you talked about the you know the mediator.
This was Abraham and God directly. This wasn't Moses and angels and all that stuff, right?
So, so in essence, in verses nineteen to twenty, that that what we just covered, I would say that's a question that Paul raises about the law, and here in verses twenty-one and twenty-two, he's going to point out a significant limitation. That the law has so there's a question about the law, and then there's a limitation that Paul's going to bring up about the law, and and I love what you said a minute ago about Satan being the master makeup artist, because what he did and what he is doing even today in in thousands of people's lives who who buy into this idea is that he takes Moses, and and repaints Moses and makes him look like the giver of life. And Paul is going to be really clear here that the law has a massive limitation, and the limitation is this: it can never bring you life. It can do a ton of really good things. We're going to see some of the great things it does.
It can point you in some really good directions, but there is a thing it cannot do, and what it cannot do is the one thing you desperately need more than anything else, and that's life before God. And the law can never give you life.
So look at verse 21 and see how Paul brings this out as he talks about the limitation. Of the law, is the law contrary to the promise of God? Of course not.
So he's already dealt with that. That's sort of concluding what he brought up in in verse nineteen. Why the law? It was added because of transgressions, and it's not contrary to the promise of God. And and so he's wrapping that up.
However. If the law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the law, but the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. And so, this is really, really important that we understand what Paul's saying here. He is not saying to us that the law is contrary to the promise.
And he's not saying that the law is bad. He is saying that the law was never designed to bring people to eternal life. And when you try to use something that God gave you to do something that it was never designed to do, you're going to end up in a massive world of hurt and trouble. And that's what happened to the Israelites. They took this gift that God gave them, and that gift was designed to to remind them and to bring them to a place where they felt the weight of sin.
They saw how bad it was. They felt its weight on them. They saw the destructive effects of it, and they saw how impossible it was. To try to earn their way to perfect holiness because they had something in them that was bent towards sin.
So, so think about what he's saying here. The law, if if the law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would surely have been by the law. But that's not what happened. When you read the Torah, when you read the Word of God, it imprisons every one and everything under sin. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.
So there is a statement that God said about every single human being: all of you. Are sinners because you have fallen short of the glory of God, and the reason you have sinned is you have missed God's mark. You've not been able to measure up to the perfect holiness, and that's why the promise was never by works. It was always by faith, and that's what you see in verse twenty-two. The Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
There is a promise of life. God said, "I will give life to people," but it's never going to come through Moses. It's always going to come through my offspring, and and that offspring is Jesus Christ. Yeah, the seed, the seed that we talked about last week, not seeds plural, but the seed. Correct.
The through the through the son of Abraham, the son of David, Christ, the chosen seed. That's how the blessing flows to the seeds plural, which we become then.
Sons of Abraham and daughters of Abraham, spiritual daughters, which is incredible. That means non-Jews. That means that's right.
So let me, yeah, yeah, let me let me just make one clarification for our leaders of these Bible studies, because it says the Scripture imprisoned everybody under sin, and it's almost interesting to think about that because sometimes we can get a really wrong idea, like the Scripture is our jailer. And that's not what the word "imprisoned" there means. It comes from a Greek word that means to hem in, to shut up on every side, so there is no way out. And the Scripture does that. The Scripture hems us in to our sinfulness.
It doesn't let us escape. You know when you, you know, to your point about Ray Comfort, right? When when when you meet people in in the mall or you're out walking around and you ask people if they deserve to go to hell, what do you think the average person is going to tell you? Yeah, and what Ray does, he just says, "Hey, are you a good person?" You know, and well, of course, man. I'm not.
I don't doubt they're killing people. I'm trying to help my fellow man. I'm, you know, I'm working for the man. I'm giving a little bit back, but then, right. But how do you measure it?
How do you measure if you're good? You know, that's right.
So what happens then? Yes, sir. You you start bringing out the scripture, and you start letting the scripture hem that person in. Yes. Right.
Because if you say to somebody. Do do you do you think Adolf Hitler should go to heaven? Most people are going to say no, right? He's burning in hell. If you ask, what about Mother Teresa's Mother Teresa?
Oh yeah, she's in heaven. Why?
Well, look at what they did. Look at what Adolf Hitler did, and look at what, yeah, look at what Mother Teresa did, right? And Paul is saying the Scripture is going to hem you in. The Scripture is going to graciously back you into a place where you have to, you have to literally acknowledge, God said, we're not going to get in on the basis of what we do, whether it's good or bad. We're going to get in on the basis of who we trust, right?
And what we believe. It's never on the basis of doing. It's always on the basis of believing, right? Because if it's on the basis of doing, well, let me tell you what God says about doing. You have to do all of it.
You have to do it all the time, and you have to do it perfectly. Yep. Yeah, Deuteronomy twenty-seven. You know, whoever whoever lives by the law must keep the law perfectly, or be under a curse. James two ten.
If you violate one of the laws of God, you violate the law.
Now, Doctor Horn, this and this is the perfect setup because Paul says the law is both. As we get these verses twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-two, the law is both a guardrail, a guard, maybe like a jailer, even. But it's also a tutor, a schoolmaster, pedagogue. You know, which is what you know. I guess these ancient Greeks, Romans, in their culture, they had this kind of disciplinarian person that made sure they got to school, made sure they behaved, and they couldn't wait to be out from under the vice grip of that tutor.
And the law is you're just you are describing the law is exactly that because the law confronts. Us with absolutely inexcusable. Guilt that we cannot deny when you lay yourself up against God's perfect law, and is that kind of where that tutor's going, where Paul's going, Doctor Horn?
Well, so so yes, I would say you know as we talked about in verses twenty two and twenty and twenty two, the law hems us in, right? It it pushes us to realize we are sinners and we're under condemnation. And we aren't going to get out by doing.
So, what is it we need to believe? And the law changes from from hemming us in to to keeping us safe, right? It points us to the right solution.
So, when you go back to the law, it doesn't just condemn sin; it actually Points you in the direction of how you are rescued from sin through the sacrificial system, right?
So it isn't just that the law hems you in and makes you confront the fact that you're a sinner. The law also pointed you to God's solution, and the and God's solution was always a substitute.
So if you lived in Old Testament Israel, there was a way for you to be forgiven. There was a way for you to to remove yourself from the punishment and the consequences of your sin, which was God's wrath. And it wasn't by working. It wasn't by working harder and making up-keep promises that you would never sin again. It was by bringing a lamb.
And you would bring that lamb to the temple or the tabernacle, and you would transfer your sins by confessing them on the head of that lamb. And you would watch the high priest or the priest slaughter that lamb in your presence. And and that priest would remind you, this is what should happen to you. But God has made a way for your sins to be paid for another, and this lamb is going to cover your sins. It it was never the law never made a provision for you to work harder or to make up, or or to barter with God.
You had to bring a substitute that would die in your place, and that that happened to for fifteen hundred years. Every year, regularly, every Israelite would have to come and bring a substitute, and that was the law teaching something. Right, the law was teaching Israel that God was going to take care of their sins through a substitute. That's why John the Baptist said. When he saw the offspring show up on the banks of the Jordan River in the form of Jesus, he said, "Behold, the Lamb of God.
That's God's Lamb that He sent, and that Lamb is going to take away the to the whole world." Yeah, right. Yeah, when Christ came, He fulfilled all that.
Now, Doctor Horn, it came up again this week.
Someone asked, and this was from innocence. This was not from trying to be a Judaizer, but someone asked innocently in one of our groups. He said, "So." Now hold on. Let me get this right. Old Testament, it's the works that the children of Israel had to do, all that stuff that brought their salvation.
In the New Testament, it's faith. And so, to just quickly dispel that, you kind of just did really well. But yeah, well, that's the point, right? If you really, it's the same faith in the old and the new, and that's what Paul is trying to clarify here. And and that's the point.
If you really go back and listen to the law, not what you thought you knew about the law, but what you really, really, you know, when you really look at the law, the law never pointed you to works. You know, the law imprisoned you. It hemmed you in under sin and and cornered you and said, "There's no way out." And then you're like, well, how how do I get forgiveness? How do I get righteousness? And the law said, you are never going to get it through keeping Moses.
You're net Moses can't help you. You're never going to get it by keeping the commandments better because you've already broken them.
So you need a substitute to take the penalty. And to pay the the price of that disobedience, which is death, and so the law made a provision, and and it pointed you to that provision. You know, if you were an Old Testament Israelite, you knew that, right? You wouldn't come to the priest and say, "Hey, give me give me fifteen more commandments. I'll work on the first ten, but can you give me an additional fifteen so I can make up?" Nobody thought that way.
Everybody understood: if I want forgiveness, I got to bring a lamb to the tabernacle. Or to the temple, I got to put my hands on its head. I got to transfer my guilt to that lamb, and that lamb's got to die. Everybody knew that, right? The law taught them that, and it kept doing that until the real lamb showed up—the lamb that God sent showed up.
And when that lamb showed up, what we see is is that it never was by works, right? It was always by trusting God. And putting your faith in what God told you to do, God told you to put your hand on the head of that lamb, and confess your sins before that priest, and and transfer the guilt to that lamb, and God would cover the blood of that lamb. Because one day He was going to send His own Son. That's why at the end of verse twenty four, we read the law was our guardian until Christ came, so that we would be justified by faith.
Right. Right. And now that we have faith, now that we have the lamb, we're no longer under the guardian. Yeah, that's why we don't show up with a lamb anymore to be sacrificed. Right, that's why we don't go to church once a year, dragging our cow with us, or or bringing our lamb and and and then taking it down the aisle and standing there while our pastor slaughters it.
Right, but that's what you would have done. All the way up till the time Jesus went to the cross. Yeah, and even and even that sacrifice wasn't what it wasn't that sacrifice.
Okay, check that box. I'm going to heaven because I killed this lamb. I'm good to go. No, it was the faith, trusting God to redeem you. The faith of Abraham that that preceded the law.
It was God. Abraham believed God. Genesis 15:6. God accounted him. God justified him.
And the just shall live by faith.
So they were living by faith in the one that would save them, trusting in the Lamb that would come, the Messiah, the Deliverer, which God had foretold. And now we're looking back, believing on you know on the finished work. They were looking forward to the finished work.
So Doctor Horn is crazy. It's just really crazy. And I'm gonna I'm gonna send a link to Ray Comfort's ministry, LivingWaters.com. He I've seen this guy take hardened Muslims. Gender confused folks, Mormons.
I've seen them take Jews, Gentiles, all kinds of people, and he just simply asks them these questions. He says, "Okay, look." He gets them to agree that there is a standard that God's the judge, not him. You stand before God. You know, are are you a good person? Yes, I am.
Okay, let's test that. He says, "Have you ever told a lie?" He just goes through the Ten Commandments one by one. Have you told ever told a lie? They say, "Well, yeah, you know, once in a while." You know, well, what does that make you? And he says, "Ever stolen anything?
Doesn't doesn't matter the size." He goes through these. By the time he gets to even adultery and murder, Christ, you know, he talks about how Jesus said, "If you do this in your heart, you've broken the law." So, he takes hardened, prideful people that are trying to maybe mock him as he's street witnessing, and he gets them almost in tears. And sometimes they get in tears, and he just led a kid to the Lord. I saw a video of his YouTube channel who was who was like crying because he felt so much guilt. And his whole point is this.
If you're not lost, you can't be saved. And it's Jesus' point. He said, "I didn't come to save the the healthy. I didn't come to save the righteous. I came to save sinners." And the the the God.
So God had to give us this mosaic law as a tutor to teach us that to show us to expose us. It's an X-ray machine. It's a scale. It's a it's a mirror that shows us. It's unwielding.
You look in that mirror, and it's not going to make you any prettier. It's not going to fix my ugly face radio.
Okay, it is unwielding, but it shows me what's wrong. The X-ray machine shows the doctor what's broken. The X-ray machine's never healed anybody. And so when you see this little New Zealander guy and you read his book Revival's Golden Key, it's called now. It used to be Hell's Best Kept Secret.
His whole point is: look, use the artillery God's given you, use the Ten Commandments to show people the bad news of where their soul really stands before God. And and you get to the center to the point where you say, okay, okay, so you've admitted you're guilty. God says, are you innocent or guilty? And they say, well, I'm guilty. You say, well, heaven or hell?
And there's a pause. And inevitably they'll say, "Well, hell," and then then Ray says, and we should say, "Hey, let me tell you about the good news. Let me tell you who who redeemed you from the curse of that law, because he became a curse for you. And now their heart is ready to hear the gospel." But it took a lot of law. It took a lot of years.
A lot of prophets, didn't it, Dr. Horn, to get the Jews to tenderize, you know, to to show them, to expose them, and it's still happening today, right? Yeah, and that's the beauty of how this passage ends, because there's something that happens when you put the law in its place and you let the law do its job, right? When the law does its job, it forces you to admit your sin, and it crushes you under the weight of that sin, so you never ever think you can get out on your own. And then the law points you to the way that God made.
For you to escape the penalty of that sin and the condemnation of that law through the person of Jesus Christ, but then there's an amazing thing that happens in verse 27, right? In verses 27 and 28, what we find out is that the law, the law could never do this, and and and it could never even come close because what happened when we turn to Jesus Christ isn't just that we were forgiven of our sins. That would have been amazing if that's all that happened, but there's something more that happened. What happened is we were baptized into Christ, and when we were baptized into Christ, we became Abraham's true children, and we became the inheritors of Abraham's immense promise. God gave Abraham an immense promise: you are going to inherit the earth, and from you.
Is going to be an immense blessing for all the earth, and all of a sudden, when we turned away from Moses and turned to Christ, we didn't just get a pardon; we got a complete change of identity. We are now in Christ. We got a complete change of Family, we belong to God, and we got a complete change in our destiny and our future inheritance. And it doesn't matter if we're a Jew or a Gentile, right? It doesn't matter if we are slave or free.
It doesn't matter if we're male or female. Everybody gets it.
Now, if you lived in the Old Testament, it mattered if you were a Jew or Gentile. If you lived under Moses, it mattered if you were free. Or slave, it mattered if you were a male or female. I mean, go read Moses. Moses had a different set of standards for women that he did for men.
If something if something happened to a woman in the field, the penalty was different than if something happened to a man. I mean, there was a difference between men and male and female. There was a difference between slave or free. There was a difference between Jew or Gentile. When Jesus came, He eradicated those differences.
There's none of that left, and we stand on equal footing as full, full sons and daughters of God, because we turned away from Moses. And let Moses point us to one who could bring all of this about, and that's why Paul is saying, "You guys have got to be insane to want to go back under Moses. You you are not thinking.
Somebody bewitched you.
Somebody got in your head, and you're not thinking straight when you want to go back under Moses. Moses can never give you what you have, so don't go back." Wow! Yeah, and that's the theme throughout the whole book. Is he's you know you've always said it so well. Paul's the freedom fighter.
Calling them to the freedom Christ has given them, two little little points that we don't have to develop. I wish we had a little more time to develop this, but one don't take verse twenty-seven to mean you got to be baptized to be saved. It's the baptism there is talking about being identified with Christ, being identified with Abraham's belief. It's it's the idea of full identification and how that transforms you know someone. It's not you know that's used a lot by the way of First Corinthians ten.
Talks about how they were baptized into Moses. You know, they were identified with him as the deliverer from you know from Egypt and such.
So, that's one thing to make sure you understand that it's it's not specifically talk about water baptism. But by the way, water baptism is a thing we do out of obedience once we become believers. Believers baptism that we display and we tell everyone about what that's an outward expression, a beautiful thing to reflect and to demonstrate to the world in inward reality. The Second thing, Doctor Horn, you just touched on that verse twenty-eight. A lot of feminists, a lot of folks with folks with rogue doctrine, even all the gender confusion folks, they take verse twenty-eight to say, "Hey, there you go.
You know, we're gonna we're gonna put you know people in the wrong places of leadership in the church. There's neither male nor female. It's not talking about egalitarianism, feminism." Is talking about the ground is level at the foot of the cross, right, Doctor Horn? Really quick, it's so important, and that's how we wrap. That's how he wraps the passage up.
Of course, verse twenty nine is a beautiful verse too. Yeah, well, one, it's it's talking about leveling the ground at the cross, but it's also talking about leveling our value. In other words, we're our value is not any longer in our gender, and it's not any longer in our social status. Or in our ethnic heritage, our our value is in our identity with Christ, right?
So it's not an egalitarian agenda. It's not a gender agenda. It's not even a racial agenda. This isn't about social justice. This is about finding our our our our identity.
In Christ and getting there through the cross and not through Moses. Yeah, salvation is is at stake here, and it's crazy. All have sinned. I love Romans three. We read verse twenty three, but I love Romans three twenty two, where it talks about all of us, with respect to everyone, free slave, you know, everyone.
There's no difference. We're all sinners. You know, we're all marked. We're all plagued with the curse of sin. The law exposes that.
But we're all amazingly gifted. This grace, in that, and there's no discrimination—not by race, ethnicity, not by gender. Christ came; He came and died for sinners, and that's the beauty of that. And and this, and of course, this culminating verse about the promise, the inheritance of faith, being God's seed. I mean.
Dr. Horn, this is a rich verse. I I just I hope everyone will memorize verse verse twenty nine, because this idea of inheritance, man, we we we became. I I was witnessing to a guy yesterday, and I said, Hey, listen, God wants to make you a trillionaire.
Now let me explain that. I'm not talking about your bank account. I'm talking about when you admit you're a sinner, when you fall, when you call upon the name of the Lord to be saved, when you when you ask God to save you. When you become born again by His grace, by faith alone, in Christ alone, through grace alone, and what He did, His work's not your own. You become you become a heir of God.
You become adopted as a son and daughter of God. He is your Father. No longer your judge. You're no longer under a curse. You're under a blessing.
And you are your worth is infinite. A trillion dollars doesn't come close to what the worth of a believer is, right? Doctor Horn, close us out here with that thought. Yeah, Lord, I pray that you would help us and give grace, Lord. We love you.
We're so grateful for you and for what you have done in our lives, and we just pray that you would continue to bless us. As we continue to study this amazing book, in Jesus' name, Amen. Thank you, Doctor Horne, and thank you for joining us for this Wednesday in the Word podcast. Learn more at WedInTheWord dot com. Follow us on YouTube, Facebook, and all social media, including Instagram.
And be encouraged. Stay in the Word. Read it. Share it. Study it, memorize it, and meditate on God's word.
Every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him. Proverbs thirty verse five.
