Galatians 3:18
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Hello, church. It's good to be with you this evening. I won't be preaching the text that's on the front of your bulletin. Stepping in, last minute to preach for someone else. I am preaching a text that we read this morning and that's very near and dear to my heart. So tonight we'll be in Galatians 3.18. That's on page 973 in the Red Pew Bibles. Nearly every area of our lives comes with its rules and regulations.
Some of those are spoken, some are unspoken. Just about all of you drove here, and on the way here this evening, you stopped at all the red lights, hopefully. You used your turn signal, you kept it relatively close to the posted speed limits, and God willing, no one arrived here this evening with a traffic violation in hand. At work, some of our jobs play by different rules. Some have to be in the door, clocked in by a certain amount of time, or perhaps over time you could be fired for being late.
Maybe you have to cook the chicken nuggets to the right temperature, or you risk termination, or you have to return every thank you with a my pleasure, or else you're done for. I know we have many Chick-fil-A employees in the building. There's also unwritten rules in some houses as well, like keep your toothbrush and your hairbrush and your makeup brush and your lotion and your straightener and your blow dryer on your side of the vanity, and everything will be just fine.
More seriously, we also make certain commitments to each other as church members. Covenant promises to one another that we will walk together in brotherly love, that we will exercise Christian care and watchfulness over each other and faithfully warn, rebuke, and admonish one another, as the case shall require, that we will not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, nor omit the great duty of prayer both for ourselves and for others. I could go on. Unfortunately, sometimes folks do forsake the gathering and are disciplined for non-attendance.
Nearly every area of our lives we have agreed to or committed to following a set of rules or make certain commitments in order to flourish and even sometimes to avoid certain punishments. Our verse tonight, Galatians 3.18, again it's on page 973 in the Red Pew Bible. Paul writes, For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
I'll read it again since it's not on the bulletin. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Our world so often functions in the opposite of this sentiment, right? Mostly what we inherit, what we get, comes by what we are able to do, what we are able to accomplish or offer. And that's actually not all that bad, right? If you think about it, your air conditioner breaks, a man comes over, he says it'll cost $500 to fix, you agree to pay him, he does the work, he fixes it, now you have cold air, he receives the agreed upon price, and life moves on.
You order an Uber, Uber tells you ahead of time it's going to cost $22, you accept, the car comes, picks you up, you follow the rules, you check that little box that says, I don't want to talk to the driver, and the driver doesn't talk to you, and he drops you off after a quiet car ride, and everybody's happy, and they get paid for their service, right? Our economy and function in this world is so often dependent on these transactions that We expect them. We do our best to meet them. It helps us carry on with our day.
But what about in your marriage? I joke about the mess and the bathroom vanity, right? You hear about the couples who one couple puts the cat back on the toothpaste and the other one who doesn't, right? But much more seriously, what about when the health of your in-laws deteriorate so severely and quickly that they now need to move in with you and your spouse? And maybe you don't feel like you signed up for that. What about when your husband gets caught tweaking the numbers at his job at work and loses his high-paying job and all of a sudden you're downsizing, you're changing school plans, changing retirement plans, or maybe not retiring at all?
My wife and I actually talked about this verse in particular before we got married nearly 12 years ago. Galatians 3.18, in fact, it's inscribed on the inside of our wedding bands. We talked about if what we inherited from one another when we were about to get married, if what we inherited depends on what we were able to do for one another, what we can accomplish for one another, then the covenant promise that we're about to make to one another would actually be built on performance and not given in grace as a promise.
So we decided to, in grace, covenant with one another in marriage based on a promise, not performance. And if you're not a Christian in the room tonight and you hear this, it might sound a little bit foreign to you. Well, we sat under the preaching of God's word this morning in Genesis 12 and we read about God's promise through Abraham to make a great nation. That God's people would be established through Abraham. Genesis 12, 2-3.
And I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And here in Galatians 3 tonight, Paul is writing to the church in Galatia because they're confused wanting to earn their salvation by works thinking that they can earn favor with God and we read this this morning he starts off this chapter writing in a fury in Galatians 3.1 he says oh you foolish Galatians who has bewitched you it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified let me ask you only this did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected in the flesh, in your works?
Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law? Or by hearing with faith? Just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteous. And then skipping down to before our verse tonight, 17. This is what I mean, he says. The law, which came 430 years afterwards, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. That is to say, when you read God's commandments, those commandments are good, and also they don't undo God's covenant promise.
They do not become the thing by which we keep our covenant with God. No, God keeps his covenant with us by himself. Greg talked about it this morning, that God signed this covenant himself. In Genesis 15, a couple chapters later, Greg will preach in a few weeks, God formalizes this covenant with Abraham through a formal ceremony. And guess what? While it happens, while he's formalizing this covenant with Abraham, Abraham's asleep.
God puts him to sleep and swears the covenant promise true by himself. And it's God's grace to us that he does so. One translation I read of our passage tonight says that God, in His grace, gave it to Abraham as a promise. Praise God that the conditions of the inheritance are not dependent on your obedience, brother or sister, because you have failed. Every one of us in this room, be it lust, deceitfulness, envy, covetedness, gossip, dishonesty, manipulation, idol worship of our status, our position, or our performance, every one of us would lose our inheritance if it came by the law.
But God, in His grace, gave it as a promise. Why? Because of grace. Because He knew you could never do it on your own because of your sinful nature. So He promised the inheritance, and He sealed it. Sealed the promise himself in the death of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus. If that's not true for you, if you're not a Christian, if you don't know that, grab someone after the service tonight and ask them what this promise is all about.
Christian, because this wonderful promise is true for you in Christ, it ought to cause you to extend that same grace toward others as well. This is the gospel of grace that we have received. Free forgiveness from our sins in Christ because he paid the penalty that our sins earned. So let's look at a particular application of the gospel here. Two applications to those of us in the room. I think this will speak to just about everybody.
First off, to those in the room who are married, to those who are not, hear this and prepare your hearts for marriage in this way. But to those of you who are married, reflect on the areas of your marriage that are currently transactional. What do you give to your husband based on what you get in return? Husbands, are you basing your level of service and care towards your wife based loosely on how well you think that she serves and cares for you?
Wives, what your husband is able to produce in his functions and work and in the family, do they affect the way that you treat him, think about him, talk about him to others or honor him? Husbands, how many bargaining chips are you currently holding on to in your marriage? What areas of leverage are you waiting to use? Spouses, do you find yourselves comparing what you receive out of your relationship to other wives or husbands that you witness, coveting the relationship or the blessings that the Lord has bestowed on them?
If what you inherit from your spouse depends on the law, what you're able to do for one another, then it no longer depends on the promise that you made to him or her when you looked at one another in the eyes at the altar, however many days or weeks or months or decades ago. So if any of that's true for you, confess your sins to God and to one another. And Lord willing, God will bless your marriage with a comfort because your marriage is based on grace, given in a promise.
And second, to those of you who are members of this church, Unfortunately, when you join 3rd Avenue, it doesn't necessarily come with a lot of health, wealth, and happiness. It's not part of the promise. Sometimes it does. Sometimes the shellers email about BATS tickets. Sometimes you might happen upon a free bike over Greg's list or a good deal on a gumball machine. Sometimes we have popcorn from a popcorn machine before members' meetings.
primarily what you do inherit when you become a member of this church is you inherit others' burdens. And so we make hospital visits and we loan out cars when it's least convenient and we offer rides when it's out of the way and we participate in meal trains when it's hard enough to get our own meal on the table for our own family and we pray for one another even when we're exhausted at the end of the day after a hard work day or a hard day of parenting, stress at school we bow our head and we pray for our brother who we know is battling Parkinson's and for his wife who's laboring in his care we pray for visas to come quickly we pray for more to be trained up and sent out for our church to experience more bittersweet losses where other churches and congregations around the world gain other wonderful saints. We pray for college students who we might never meet to encounter
Jesus through a Bible study on campus. We pray for brain cancer to remit. We pray for new jobs and healthy pregnancies and short hospital stays. And we also rejoice with others, even when it's hard. We rejoice with others for their healthy babies, for their engagements and their weddings and for their promotions, even when we so badly might want it to come for ourselves. Because If what we inherit from one another was up to us, we would drown in our own debt from the amount of transactions.
But God, in his grace, showed us the way through the gospel. And he did so by his word, through his promise. So, church, reflect on how that grace ought to drive you deeper into community here in this church and how he might use your love for the gospel to bless others. Let's pray. God, would you direct our hearts to respond in such thankfulness to your kindness towards us.
We could never earn our way to you by the law. We could never earn our favor by the sweat of our brow and the grit of our teeth and the effort of our ways. So thank you, Father, for not making it so. Thank you, Father, for making a way for us through your perfect son, Jesus. So by your grace, we pray in his name. Amen.