NXR Podcast - THE SERMON - In His Kindness, God Will Destroy Dispensationalism - Galatians 3:15-29 | Pastor Andrew Isker
Aired: 2024-07-14
Duration: 56:30


=== Stand for God's Word (04:11) ===

[00:00:00]  Well, good morning.
[00:00:02]  And thank you all for having me here.
[00:00:05]  We drove down this week from Minnesota all the way down to here in Texas.
[00:00:10]  And so the first thing I noticed is it is hot here.
[00:00:14]  So my church doesn't even have air conditioning.
[00:00:18]  And so in the summer, it's a little warm.
[00:00:20]  But even with the air conditioning here, it's like I need something.
[00:00:24]  I know I'm going to be dripping all over my Bible by the time we're done here.
[00:00:27]  But the passage I've selected today to read.
[00:00:32]  And to preach on is Galatians 3, verses 15 to 29.
[00:00:40]  And I don't know if you guys stand for God's word, or if you don't, you do?
[00:00:45]  Yeah, all right.
[00:00:45]  Well, then please stand for the reading of God's word.
[00:00:54]  Brethren, I speak in the manner of men, though it is only a man's covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it.
[00:01:05]  Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made.
[00:01:10]  He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your seed, who is Christ.
[00:01:20]  And this I say, that the law, which was 430 years later, cannot annul the covenant.
[00:01:26]  That was confirmed before by God in Christ that it should make the promise of no effect.
[00:01:32]  For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
[00:01:40]  What purpose then does the law serve?
[00:01:44]  It was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.
[00:01:50]  And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.
[00:01:53]  Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one.
[00:01:59]  Is the law then against the promises of God?
[00:02:03]  Certainly not.
[00:02:04]  For if there had been a law given which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law.
[00:02:13]  But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
[00:02:23]  But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed.
[00:02:32]  Therefore, the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
[00:02:40]  But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
[00:02:45]  For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.
[00:02:50]  For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
[00:02:56]  There's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
[00:03:06]  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
[00:03:14]  The word of the Lord.
[00:03:15]  And you can be seated.
[00:03:19]  Let's pray.
[00:03:21]  Our Father and our God, we thank you for your grace and your mercy to us that we can gather together with your people in peace before your throne, that you give us grace to come before you, that you speak to us through your word.
[00:03:38]  By the power of your Spirit, and we ask that He would be here and present among us, that He would be leading us and guiding us, forming and shaping and transforming our hearts and conforming us into the image of your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.
[00:03:57]  Amen.
[00:04:00]  Well, what I'm used to doing back home is preaching through an entire book of the Bible.
[00:04:07]  It sounds like that's what you guys do too.
[00:04:09]  You go through the whole.
[00:04:10]  The whole book.

=== The Bible as a Book of Contracts (15:19) ===

[00:04:11]  So, I'm not really used to doing a topical sermon or just a one off thing.
[00:04:16]  And, you know, I'd much rather just go through the whole book of Galatians with you this morning.
[00:04:20]  But, you know, Joel told me he usually only goes about 50 minutes.
[00:04:25]  So, that's not going to be enough time.
[00:04:27]  Yeah, that's not true.
[00:04:28]  He goes longer than that.
[00:04:30]  But I don't think I have six or eight hours to go through the whole book with you today, unfortunately.
[00:04:35]  So, we're just going to look at part of chapter three.
[00:04:39]  And this.
[00:04:41]  And this section here, the reason I chose it is because it deals with things that are very timely, very relevant to us today.
[00:04:51]  There are a couple errors that I wanted to dig into and talk about.
[00:04:58]  And they're two very different ones, and they're both relevant to this text.
[00:05:04]  So I want to dig into those things.
[00:05:06]  But Galatians as a whole, what is this book about?
[00:05:10]  Paul, the Apostle Paul, he is writing to the churches of Galatia and Asia Minor, in Southeast Asia Minor, all these different churches in that area that he had helped plant on his first missionary journey.
[00:05:24]  And they have a problem.
[00:05:26]  They have a very serious problem.
[00:05:28]  It's actually the most serious problem in the New Testament, this recurrent problem, which is Judaizing.
[00:05:35]  It's Judaizing.
[00:05:35]  This is the great threat to the gospel in the New Testament era the Judaizers.
[00:05:42]  And we don't really think about that or talk about that.
[00:05:44]  It's not really, you know, they're not beating down the door here, attacking your church, I don't think.
[00:05:50]  So since it's 2,000 years ago, we don't think about the context of what it means and why it was such a great threat.
[00:05:56]  But what it means, what the whole New Testament is about, is you have the Old Covenant, right?
[00:06:03]  The whole Old Testament, all of that, and then Jesus comes, and now you have the New Covenant.
[00:06:08]  And for a brief period of time, the Old Covenant's still chugging along, but the New Covenant has come in, and there is conflict between the two.
[00:06:17]  And right in the middle of that conflict is the Judaizers, right?
[00:06:20]  The Judaizers, they would come into the churches, and they would tell the Christians there that, you know, you're not really saved unless you conform to the law of Moses.
[00:06:31]  And we think, well, they're just kind of confused.
[00:06:33]  It's not a big deal.
[00:06:34]  It's a huge deal, a very big deal to Paul, because what that is saying is that what Jesus did was nothing.
[00:06:42]  It's rejecting the work of Christ on the cross to liberate his people from Satan, from sin, from death, and from the law.
[00:06:53]  And so, these Judaizers, they're coming in and they're saying, no, these Greeks that have come to the church, these Gentiles, they need to get circumcised, they need to stop eating pork.
[00:07:03]  They need to follow the law of Moses if they really want to be saved.
[00:07:07]  And we think, oh, that's just kind of a silly error.
[00:07:08]  It's a mistake.
[00:07:10]  But no, that is a rejection of the gospel.
[00:07:14]  And so, Paul is dealing with this issue throughout the entire book of Galatians.
[00:07:20]  And he gets to this point in the chapter here and really reveals to us what actually is occurring.
[00:07:28]  What is going on with the covenant?
[00:07:31]  You have the covenant made to Abraham, you have the covenant with Moses, the series of progressions of the covenant.
[00:07:38]  And what he's showing us here is that the new covenant is the greatest and final one in that long series of covenants, and it's the one that opens up the entire world to the promises of God.
[00:07:53]  And so, if you have your Bibles open, we'll look at this in a little more detail, looking at verses 15 to 18 at first.
[00:08:03]  And so, in verses 15 to 18, what do we see here?
[00:08:06]  We see that who is this covenant?
[00:08:09]  This covenant, too.
[00:08:10]  He's talking about a covenant, and the first thing he says is, I'll just speak to you in the language of men.
[00:08:16]  What is a covenant?
[00:08:17]  We think about it.
[00:08:18]  What's a covenant?
[00:08:19]  It's a contract.
[00:08:22]  I have a friend who talks about this sometimes, and he's like, You know, really, Andrew, the Bible really just is a book about property and contracts.
[00:08:35]  That's what it's about.
[00:08:36]  And I'm like, Well, yeah, I mean, I guess you could say that.
[00:08:40]  But this major feature in the Bible is covenants, right?
[00:08:44]  It's a business contract, right?
[00:08:46]  But it's a pretty serious business contract because it's between God and men.
[00:08:51]  It's between God and men.
[00:08:53]  And Paul talks about it in these terms, in the manner of men.
[00:08:59]  And he's making this contrast because the promises to Abraham preceded the giving of the law by 430 years, he says.
[00:09:06]  And what he is arguing that Judaizers are doing is saying these promises that were made to Abraham, well, the law comes in and they're annulling or they're changing the promises a little bit, saying that the only way you can have access to these promises is where through God.
[00:09:21]  Through Moses, right?
[00:09:22]  Through the law of Moses.
[00:09:24]  And he says, no, that isn't the way at all.
[00:09:27]  Right?
[00:09:27]  If a covenant is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it.
[00:09:33]  And in verse 16, right, who does he say the promises were made to?
[00:09:36]  Right?
[00:09:36]  The promises in Genesis 12 and in Genesis 17, who were the promises made to?
[00:09:41]  They are made to Abraham and his seed.
[00:09:44]  Right?
[00:09:45]  In my translation of the Bible here, seed is capitalized.
[00:09:47]  Maybe yours is too.
[00:09:48]  Capital S, seed.
[00:09:50]  The unfortunate thing is you go back to Genesis 12.
[00:09:54]  You know, 12 in Genesis 17, when that word is used, and sometimes they translate it as offspring, which is terrible.
[00:09:59]  It's seed, right?
[00:10:00]  To your seed I give the land of Canaan, right?
[00:10:04]  To your seed I make these promises.
[00:10:06]  Well, that S in Genesis should be capitalized just like it is in Galatians, right?
[00:10:13]  Who is the seed?
[00:10:14]  It's Jesus.
[00:10:16]  It's Jesus.
[00:10:17]  And that's what Paul says.
[00:10:18]  He does not say, and to seeds, plural, but as of many.
[00:10:24]  But how many?
[00:10:26]  One singular one seed, and to your seed, and who is that?
[00:10:30]  That is Jesus Christ, right?
[00:10:33]  So you go back to Genesis and you read those promises, and you think, okay, well, who is this, right?
[00:10:39]  Who is this to, right?
[00:10:40]  Who is the ultimate heir of these promises?
[00:10:44]  Who is it?
[00:10:45]  It's Jesus, right?
[00:10:46]  You see seed, you should just see Jesus right there in Genesis, and in verse 17, right?
[00:10:53]  He says that, right, the law that happened 430 years after the promises that God made.
[00:10:59]  To Abraham.
[00:11:02]  And the covenant is what?
[00:11:03]  It's confirmed before God in Christ.
[00:11:07]  So Christ is present as these promises are made to Abraham.
[00:11:11]  It's a triune God.
[00:11:12]  He's there.
[00:11:12]  Jesus is eternally existent in the Godhead.
[00:11:16]  So Jesus is making this promise that would be ultimately fulfilled in Him.
[00:11:22]  He is there the entire time in Genesis.
[00:11:26]  And it shows, Paul says, that this law being given.
[00:11:30]  Right, it doesn't make the promise of no effect, right?
[00:11:35]  Verse 18, right?
[00:11:36]  The inheritance, right, is it of the law?
[00:11:39]  Right, is the inheritance come by the law?
[00:11:41]  Do you get this inheritance, right?
[00:11:42]  The whole point of the covenant, I mean, again, right, property, contracts, inheritance, right?
[00:11:47]  That's the language he's using, right?
[00:11:50]  How does this inheritance come by?
[00:11:52]  Does it come by keeping the law, right, by not wearing mixed fabrics?
[00:11:55]  I think this is cotton and polyester.
[00:11:57]  I'm breaking the law of Moses right now.
[00:12:00]  Uh, I had some bacon earlier today, right?
[00:12:02]  I'm breaking the law.
[00:12:04]  If the inheritance is of the law, then the promise does not matter.
[00:12:09]  The promise that God made doesn't matter.
[00:12:12]  Paul makes this point in Romans, a very similar point.
[00:12:16]  When did God make these promises to Abraham?
[00:12:19]  When did he make these promises to Abraham?
[00:12:21]  Paul says in Romans, while he was still yet uncircumcised, while he was covenantally a Gentile, he makes these promises to Abraham.
[00:12:31]  Circumcision came after that.
[00:12:33]  He's making a similar point here as well.
[00:12:36]  The promises are made to God.
[00:12:38]  Centuries before the law of Moses came.
[00:12:42]  So, Abraham wasn't necessarily, he probably had some knowledge of the law.
[00:12:45]  We see in Genesis there was a knowledge of clean and unclean and things like this.
[00:12:49]  In Noah, right?
[00:12:50]  Noah is told to take seven of every clean animal.
[00:12:54]  So, there's some knowledge there, but not like Moses had.
[00:12:59]  And so, Abraham's not keeping the law of Moses, but the promises to him.
[00:13:04]  Isn't that interesting, you Judaizers?
[00:13:06]  Paul says.
[00:13:07]  And so, now turning to verses 19 through 25, Paul keeps on going.
[00:13:13]  He says, What purpose then?
[00:13:14]  If the law is not that for these things, what purpose then is the law?
[00:13:20]  What purpose does the law serve?
[00:13:24]  What was it?
[00:13:25]  It was added because of transgressions.
[00:13:27]  And that's a confusing thing.
[00:13:28]  There's a lot of different people that have different views of what that means.
[00:13:31]  It's added because of transgressions.
[00:13:33]  And the most plausible, best explanation I've heard of what this could mean is what does the law do?
[00:13:41]  Paul makes this point also in Romans.
[00:13:43]  Romans and Galatians, very similar books.
[00:13:46]  What does the law do?
[00:13:49]  When your dad or your mom say, hey, when you're a little kid, don't touch that, before they said it, I didn't even want to touch it.
[00:13:59]  But after they say, don't touch that, now all I want to do is do what?
[00:14:02]  I want to touch the thing I was told not to touch.
[00:14:05]  And I say this as a father now.
[00:14:07]  I know how this, the mind works, the heart works that way.
[00:14:12]  What does the law do?
[00:14:13]  The law provokes more sin.
[00:14:17]  As soon as God says, don't do this thing, What do we want to do?
[00:14:21]  We want to sin even more.
[00:14:24]  That's what it does.
[00:14:25]  Pastor Joel's talking about this earlier.
[00:14:28]  This is when we teach the law, especially with a law without grace.
[00:14:33]  This is what it does.
[00:14:35]  This is what it does.
[00:14:36]  When grace comes, that God forgives us our sins, then we can be restored through it.
[00:14:42]  And so it's added because of the transgressions.
[00:14:45]  Till the seed, which is Jesus, should come.
[00:14:51]  And then he says something really interesting, really interesting here.
[00:14:54]  And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.
[00:14:58]  And so you go back to Exodus, right?
[00:15:01]  You don't see any angels handing Moses the Ten Commandments or anything like that, right?
[00:15:07]  So what is Paul talking about here?
[00:15:10]  I think, and this is what would take maybe two or three hours to discuss and explain, but I think the plausible case is that the Old Covenant, right?
[00:15:20]  The whole Old Covenant world, Who dominated the whole Old Covenant world were the angels, the heavenly host.
[00:15:27]  In the New Covenant, this is the major transition to the New Covenant, is now who is in control of the world, who has all power and authority in heaven and earth?
[00:15:40]  Jesus does.
[00:15:42]  And not just Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, as God, because God, of course, eternally always is sovereign and powerful over everything.
[00:15:49]  But who has the rule and power and authority in the New Covenant?
[00:15:52]  It's the God man.
[00:15:54]  Jesus Christ.
[00:15:55]  Now you have a human being united with God in the person of Jesus Christ sitting on the throne of the universe.
[00:16:05]  So man in Christ is exalted to rule in the new covenant.
[00:16:10]  But in the old covenant, both Jew and Gentile, both the Jews, the believing Jews, they had angels that were ruling over them, and the Gentiles too had these demons ruling over them.
[00:16:23]  What did they do?
[00:16:24]  They worshipped God.
[00:16:25]  Demons.
[00:16:26]  They worship demons.
[00:16:27]  And I don't think it was just wood and stone and metal things that they're worshiping.
[00:16:32]  I think they're worshiping actual corporeal beings.
[00:16:35]  All the ancient gods, those were real that they were worshiping.
[00:16:38]  They're bound to these things.
[00:16:40]  They're giving them their law, right?
[00:16:42]  Their contorted, twisted version of the law of Moses.
[00:16:46]  And so Paul's describing the same thing.
[00:16:49]  You're under the angels, right?
[00:16:51]  You're under the law.
[00:16:52]  You see this if Paul wrote the book of Hebrews.
[00:16:55]  I think he did.
[00:16:56]  You see this in the beginning of the book of Hebrews, right?
[00:16:59]  Why does Paul or whomever wrote Hebrews spend so much time talking about angels in the very beginning and how Jesus is superior to them?
[00:17:07]  Well, it's obvious God is superior to angels.
[00:17:10]  So, why does he spend all this time?
[00:17:11]  Because the old covenant, dominated, ruled by angels, new covenant now, man in Christ is on the throne.
[00:17:21]  And so, an indication of that here in this verse is right there as well.
[00:17:27]  And so, this is why I mean, it's just a passing reference that Paul makes, but I think it's an important one.
[00:17:33]  And so, right, what does he say?
[00:17:36]  Verse 21 is the law, right, is the law then.
[00:17:40]  Against the promises of God, right?
[00:17:42]  He's making this contrary.
[00:17:43]  He's anticipating this objection, right?
[00:17:45]  The law and the promises, those are not the same thing.
[00:17:50]  And the promise doesn't come through the law, it comes through faith.
[00:17:54]  So is the law opposed to the promises of God, right?
[00:17:57]  Because it's piling up more and more sin for God's people, it's provoking more and more sin.
[00:18:02]  Is that what's going on?
[00:18:04]  Paul says no, certainly not.
[00:18:08]  What is the truth of the matter, right?
[00:18:11]  If the law could give you the righteousness, That would fulfill these promises, then there's no need for a promise.
[00:18:18]  There's no need for it.
[00:18:20]  So it can't be that.
[00:18:22]  If there was a law that could be made, if God was going to construct some system of laws that we could follow that would make us perfectly righteous, he just would have done that.
[00:18:31]  He would have sent Jesus.
[00:18:34]  But Paul says, no, that's not the way it works.
[00:18:37]  That's not the way it works at all.
[00:18:39]  And so, verse 22.
[00:18:42]  But Scripture has confined all under sin, the same idea.
[00:18:46]  The law confines them in their sin, keeps them guarded.
[00:18:52]  It's a guardian that watches over them, protects them, boxes them in their sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
[00:19:07]  And so, because before faith came, we're kept by guard under the law, kept for the faith, so they're being preserved.
[00:19:16]  It's like they're on a game.
[00:19:18]  A game reserve, right?
[00:19:19]  Here you are, here's the fences of the law, and you just hang out here and wait until what?
[00:19:25]  Wait until Jesus comes and opens the gates, right?
[00:19:29]  That's what they're waiting for, right?

=== Waiting in the Game Reserve (14:01) ===

[00:19:31]  The other analogy that Paul uses here is that the law is also a tutor.
[00:19:35]  That's not the only thing, it's not just guarding you and keeping you locked away, right?
[00:19:39]  Hermetically sealed here.
[00:19:42]  It's also a tutor that is bringing us to Christ, right?
[00:19:48]  About Jesus, right?
[00:19:50]  And Pastor Joel talked about this as well just now, right?
[00:19:55]  That's one of the uses of the law is to teach you righteousness, teach you about Jesus, teach you about your need for Jesus Christ.
[00:20:05]  So it's not like the law, oh, the law is bad, right?
[00:20:07]  And this is a major problem, probably the third, maybe I should say three things we're dealing with it.
[00:20:12]  This major problem of antinomianism, right?
[00:20:15]  This big word just means against the law, or people that don't like the law.
[00:20:20]  And It's a huge problem in the church today, right?
[00:20:24]  And many people that are of the antinomian bent, they read Galatians and say, Hop, I'm vindicated, right?
[00:20:29]  I'm vindicated.
[00:20:30]  There's no law, there's only grace, right?
[00:20:32]  Look at Paul talking bad about the law, right?
[00:20:35]  I am right.
[00:20:36]  Law doesn't matter.
[00:20:38]  That's not true at all, right?
[00:20:40]  Look at what Paul says here, right?
[00:20:41]  Therefore, the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.
[00:20:47]  He doesn't say here the law doesn't matter.
[00:20:49]  The law is really bad, actually.
[00:20:51]  You should not care about the law.
[00:20:53]  You should turn up your nose when you read the Old Testament.
[00:20:57]  No.
[00:20:58]  He says the law is our tutor to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith, that we might know our sin and know our need for the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:21:07]  But verse 25, right, it sums it all up.
[00:21:10]  But after faith has come, We're no longer under a tutor.
[00:21:14]  We're no longer, and that word under is very important.
[00:21:17]  It doesn't mean that the law is gone.
[00:21:19]  God's moral standard is completely gone.
[00:21:21]  You're under grace.
[00:21:21]  You can do whatever you want.
[00:21:24]  He addresses that in Romans as well.
[00:21:25]  He says, By no means.
[00:21:27]  By no means shall we continue to sin that grace may abound.
[00:21:31]  No.
[00:21:31]  When faith has come, we're no longer under a tutor, which means we're not in the old covenant anymore and having the law that's pointing us to Jesus.
[00:21:40]  Jesus is here now.
[00:21:42]  We don't need to be tutored to be brought to Jesus as if we're in the old covenant.
[00:21:47]  Right, that those days have passed.
[00:21:48]  That's why, right here, why should the Gentiles in the church not be circumcised and follow the law of Moses?
[00:21:55]  Not they're allowed to eat pork, right?
[00:21:58]  Why are they allowed to do all of these things?
[00:22:00]  Um, because the faith has come, we don't need that tutor, right?
[00:22:04]  All of those things, right?
[00:22:06]  All of those things in the Old Testament, all the parts, right?
[00:22:08]  When you do your you know one year Bible reading plan and you get to Leviticus, and you're like, Whoa, this is this is dry, right?
[00:22:17]  We're doing family worship, and the kids you're reading about the The different animals that are clean and unclean, the kids are not paying attention.
[00:22:23]  They're picking their nose and they're like, oh, this is boring.
[00:22:26]  Actually, we really need to pay attention to those things because the point, all of those things, what are they doing?
[00:22:30]  What is Paul saying here in verse 25 that they are doing?
[00:22:34]  They are a tutor that would bring the people of God to Christ.
[00:22:38]  All of that is pointing to Jesus.
[00:22:40]  So it's very important, even though we think, oh, it's kind of boring.
[00:22:43]  Very important to read those things.
[00:22:46]  Not important in a self-efficacy sense, and Paul's saying that.
[00:22:49]  It's not the thing saving us.
[00:22:50]  We don't have to follow it, we're not under it.
[00:22:53]  But it still teaches us about the Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:22:58]  And so finally, in this passage, we get to the apex of it.
[00:23:04]  So here, the tutor is done, and Paul continues the analogy, actually.
[00:23:09]  Why do you have a tutor?
[00:23:11]  Maybe some of you have your children tutored.
[00:23:15]  Tutors in the ancient world, you had to be fairly wealthy.
[00:23:18]  You had to be elite to be able to pay someone or have a slave that would teach your children.
[00:23:24]  And that means you're a wealthy heir.
[00:23:27]  Maybe you're a nobleman.
[00:23:28]  And that's what Paul's continuing this analogy here in verse 26.
[00:23:32]  For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:23:36]  This is an important point that Paul makes in many of his epistles if you're in the family of God, and Jesus is the king, the king of kings, the world emperor of the entire universe, and you are brought, you're adopted into his family, what does that make you?
[00:23:56]  That makes you nobility.
[00:24:00]  That's what you are in the inheritance of Christ.
[00:24:02]  You'd see this in the ancient world.
[00:24:04]  You know about Julius Caesar.
[00:24:08]  He becomes the emperor, or rather, all but the emperor, and then they kill him.
[00:24:14]  And he's dead, and he doesn't have a legitimate son anyway.
[00:24:18]  So they read his will, and what does his nephew Octavian find out?
[00:24:23]  He finds out that he has been adopted by Caesar into his family.
[00:24:30]  Right?
[00:24:30]  He is the son of Caesar and the heir of Caesar.
[00:24:34]  Right?
[00:24:34]  Adoption has to do with inheritance, right?
[00:24:37]  Back to property and law and all of those things.
[00:24:40]  Adoption has to do with inheritance.
[00:24:43]  And it's interesting the language that Paul uses here.
[00:24:46]  He says that you are all sons of God.
[00:24:51]  That's an interesting point, right?
[00:24:52]  Paul, this is a controversial statement to make, especially in this crowd, but Paul was not a feminist.
[00:25:00]  I don't think he was.
[00:25:02]  He was not a feminist, but here he's saying to everyone in the church in Galatia, the men and the women, You are what?
[00:25:08]  You are sons.
[00:25:11]  He doesn't say sons and daughters, and that's deliberate.
[00:25:14]  Not because he's a feminist or a transgender advocate or something like that.
[00:25:18]  He says this because who inherits in the biblical world, the ancient world?
[00:25:23]  Who inherits?
[00:25:24]  Sons do.
[00:25:26]  Sons do.
[00:25:27]  So, who is inheriting?
[00:25:30]  The sons of God are.
[00:25:32]  And who are the sons of God?
[00:25:33]  Everyone who's united to Christ.
[00:25:37]  Verse 25 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
[00:25:42]  At this point, here is that your baptism, what your baptism is, is you are being brought into the family of God.
[00:25:49]  You are being brought in as an heir.
[00:25:52]  You think of this.
[00:25:55]  We don't have kings and queens here.
[00:25:57]  Maybe, unfortunately.
[00:25:58]  My wife thinks, unfortunately, we don't.
[00:26:00]  Imagine if we did.
[00:26:01]  Imagine if President Trump was the king.
[00:26:05]  And maybe some of you like that, maybe some of you wouldn't.
[00:26:08]  Imagine he's the king and he says, hey, you, you, and you, I am adopting you.
[00:26:14]  As my sons.
[00:26:16]  And you're going to rule America with me.
[00:26:20]  That would be pretty cool.
[00:26:21]  Wouldn't it?
[00:26:22]  That would be pretty awesome.
[00:26:23]  You're adopted into the royal family.
[00:26:27]  And you get to sit on a knight's throne.
[00:26:28]  You get really cool clothes and walk in parades.
[00:26:33]  You're adopted into the royal family.
[00:26:35]  That's what your baptism is doing.
[00:26:36]  You're putting on the royal robes of the king of the entire universe, the king of kings and lord of lords.
[00:26:44]  You're being adopted into that royal family.
[00:26:48]  That's what your baptism is.
[00:26:51]  And then we come to verse 28.
[00:26:56]  And within this context, remember the context.
[00:26:58]  You are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:27:02]  Your baptism is entry into the family of God, the royal family of God.
[00:27:08]  And this is where he says, There is therefore neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
[00:27:21]  So, what is he saying here?
[00:27:21]  In the context, What is he saying?
[00:27:24]  In the royal family of God, as heirs of the inheritance of the promises to God, to Christ, to his people, there is no distinction between Jews and Greeks.
[00:27:36]  What is the main theme of Galatians?
[00:27:39]  Is that these old covenant people, the Jews that are separated out from the rest of the people of the world, that separation is over.
[00:27:48]  They are brought into Christ in faith, and the Gentiles, all the other people of the world, they're brought into Christ in faith.
[00:27:55]  In faith, and there's no distinction between them.
[00:27:57]  They are both equally heirs in the royal family.
[00:28:01]  It's not the Jews are up here and the Gentiles are down here.
[00:28:04]  No, it's like, no, you're one.
[00:28:05]  You're together in this.
[00:28:08]  There's neither slave nor free.
[00:28:12]  In ancient society, this actually is controversial.
[00:28:15]  In ancient society, you had lots and lots of slaves.
[00:28:18]  Maybe 20, 30% of the Roman Empire, more than that even, at different times.
[00:28:24]  We're slaves.
[00:28:25]  We're owned by someone else.
[00:28:27]  At the bottom of the social.
[00:28:29]  Status, and then you have various gradations of freemen and patricians and so forth.
[00:28:33]  There's a very rigid hierarchy in the ancient world.
[00:28:38]  In America, we don't like hierarchy, it's bad.
[00:28:41]  We don't like social classes and things like this, even though it exists.
[00:28:47]  And what is he saying here?
[00:28:49]  Whether you are a CEO, whether you're Elon Musk down in Austin and one of the richest men on the planet, if you were a Christian, or if you are just a part time worker at McDonald's, everything in between, or unemployed.
[00:29:07]  A homeless guy, but you believe in Jesus.
[00:29:10]  Everything in between, you are all one in Christ.
[00:29:12]  That hierarchy in the kingdom does not exist.
[00:29:17]  It does not exist within the kingdom, within the royal family of God.
[00:29:22]  There's neither male nor female.
[00:29:24]  What is the major point of contention in Galatians?
[00:29:27]  It's over circumcision.
[00:29:30]  Well, who gets circumcised in the law of Moses?
[00:29:33]  Only men.
[00:29:34]  Only men do.
[00:29:36]  Only men are really these covenant members.
[00:29:39]  The women are by virtue of their family status, but it's the men who get circumcised, and they're the real heirs of all of this.
[00:29:48]  But in the New Covenant, that's not the case.
[00:29:51]  That's not the case.
[00:29:53]  They inherit along with the men.
[00:29:55]  They have this status.
[00:29:56]  You think of sons of God, in verse 26, you should think of sons of God as a title, as a title that someone holds, like duke or prince or king.
[00:30:09]  Sons of God is this royal title that is held.
[00:30:13]  Equally by Jews, by Greeks, by slaves, by freemen, by men and women.
[00:30:19]  All of them together in Christ.
[00:30:22]  And so a little bit later, we'll go back to verse 28 and talk about what it doesn't mean.
[00:30:28]  What it doesn't mean, but that's what it does mean positively.
[00:30:31]  That's the context of the verse.
[00:30:33]  And then finally, verse 29.
[00:30:38]  And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed.
[00:30:42]  Lowercase s.
[00:30:44]  You are Abraham's seed.
[00:30:45]  And heirs.
[00:30:47]  According to the promise.
[00:30:49]  So the question here is: you read Genesis 12, Genesis 17, and it says, Those who bless you, Abraham, I will bless, and those who curse you, Abraham, I will curse.
[00:31:03]  Who is that to?
[00:31:04]  Who is that to?
[00:31:05]  Is it to a nation-state in the Eastern Mediterranean today?
[00:31:09]  Is it a particular ethnic group all throughout the world today?
[00:31:14]  Those promises are still active today.
[00:31:17]  Who do they belong to?
[00:31:19]  Paul tells us right here in Galatians, they belong to Jesus Christ and his people, those who belong to him by faith.
[00:31:31]  Those promises belong to Jesus and his church.
[00:31:35]  So you read those promises in Genesis to Abraham and to his seed.
[00:31:41]  Those are promises to Jesus and to his people.
[00:31:44]  You read that when it says seed, it's like, that's us right there.
[00:31:50]  It's us, right?
[00:31:52]  It is to us alone.
[00:31:53]  By faith in Jesus, right?
[00:31:55]  That's this point.
[00:31:56]  These promises, right?
[00:31:58]  These promises that God has made are to his people.
[00:32:03]  And Paul doesn't say here, well, some of the promises are to the church and some of them are to other people.
[00:32:10]  Even the promise of the land, right?
[00:32:12]  The promise of the land.
[00:32:14]  Who gets that land?
[00:32:15]  Well, the entire world is now the promised land of Canaan that belongs to.
[00:32:22]  To Jesus.
[00:32:22]  This is what Jesus says at the end of Matthew in the Great Commission.
[00:32:26]  All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.
[00:32:28]  What does that mean?
[00:32:30]  The entire planet is my inheritance.
[00:32:34]  This is what God says to him.
[00:32:37]  The Father says to him that David records in Psalm 2.
[00:32:41]  What does the Father say to the Son?
[00:32:43]  Ask of me, and I will give the nations for your inheritance.
[00:32:46]  Not just one stretch of land in a particular place.
[00:32:49]  It doesn't mean that the promise is null and void because that is one of the nations.
[00:32:54]  It's now all of the nations are the inheritance of Jesus Christ and his people and the sons of God, his royal family.
[00:33:03]  Family, right?
[00:33:04]  His co heirs with him, right?
[00:33:08]  That's when he's adopting us, that's what he's doing.
[00:33:10]  He's saying, I am writing you into the will, and you get the same inheritance as me.
[00:33:15]  And that inheritance includes the promises that were made to my father, Abraham, right?
[00:33:22]  That is what it means, right?
[00:33:24]  Which is, everything I've said here, right, runs very contrary to what many modern Christians believe today.

=== Writing You into the Will (14:50) ===

[00:33:32]  We believe, whoa.
[00:33:33]  Old covenant's still operating out here somewhere, somehow.
[00:33:37]  And those promises, those belong to not to the church or to Jesus.
[00:33:40]  They belong to people by virtue of their DNA or by virtue of their religious traditions.
[00:33:46]  They don't belong to the church.
[00:33:48]  But you read straightforwardly what Paul says right here, and you can't come away with any other point.
[00:33:55]  This is why the church, until the mid 19th century, this is why the church believed this.
[00:34:02]  The same thing that I'm saying everywhere, whether you're Catholic or Orthodox.
[00:34:06]  Or Protestant, a reformer, right up until the middle of the 19th century.
[00:34:12]  This is what we look at.
[00:34:13]  Yep, we are the church.
[00:34:16]  We are united to Christ, who is the true Israel, and he is the inheritor of the promises to Abraham.
[00:34:23]  That makes sense.
[00:34:23]  Paul said it.
[00:34:24]  I'm going to believe it.
[00:34:26]  But today, we don't believe those things.
[00:34:29]  That's the first error I wanted to address.
[00:34:32]  Let's see how much time I have here.
[00:34:34]  How much time do we have for the other ones?
[00:34:37]  The second one, and Joel's looking at me, he's like, just keep going.
[00:34:41]  You go for two more hours, it's fine.
[00:34:44]  Lunch will be cold, but it's okay.
[00:34:46]  The second error, right, going back to Galatians 3 28, the second error is, right, you read, right, anytime you make the point, right, now today in like contemporary politics, right, there's a lot of controversy over, well, what exactly is America, right?
[00:35:06]  What is America?
[00:35:07]  Is America.
[00:35:10]  Is America a people?
[00:35:11]  No, it's not a people, a particular people.
[00:35:14]  Anyone could be American.
[00:35:15]  You just have to believe the right propositions.
[00:35:18]  You just have to really love freedom.
[00:35:21]  And that's not how the original people that founded the country believed.
[00:35:25]  They believed that Americans were a particular people that settled the country.
[00:35:28]  And they would, of course, bring more people here that they thought these people will fit into what we are doing.
[00:35:36]  These people will assimilate and so forth.
[00:35:38]  So it wasn't totally restrictive.
[00:35:40]  But it still was very restrictive.
[00:35:42]  They understood themselves as a particular people.
[00:35:44]  We are Americans, as a real definite people.
[00:35:48]  But you make that point now, especially within modern evangelicalism, where you say, I don't think America is a propositional nation, I think it's a distinct people.
[00:35:59]  And mainstream evangelicals, big Eva evangelicals, what's the first thing they do?
[00:36:06]  They call you racist.
[00:36:08]  And the second thing they do is they pull out their Bibles, and what verse do they turn to?
[00:36:15]  What verse did they turn to?
[00:36:16]  They turned to Galatians 3 28.
[00:36:18]  They will say, I can't believe it.
[00:36:20]  Yeah, you're racist.
[00:36:22]  Here's what Paul says Galatians 3 28.
[00:36:24]  There's neither Jew nor Greek.
[00:36:27]  We're all one in Christ.
[00:36:29]  So that means you need to have infinity immigration into your country.
[00:36:33]  Right?
[00:36:33]  That's, I mean, it's funny, but that's really what they do.
[00:36:36]  That's really what they say.
[00:36:37]  That's really what they believe.
[00:36:40]  There's neither Jew nor Greek.
[00:36:42]  Right?
[00:36:42]  Therefore, there's no such thing as a distinct American people.
[00:36:46]  And if you believe that, you are very bad.
[00:36:49]  Right?
[00:36:49]  You are sinning.
[00:36:50]  You're committing this heinous sin.
[00:36:53]  But what is the context of this verse?
[00:36:56]  Right?
[00:36:57]  The context of this verse is not.
[00:36:59]  I mean, take away America.
[00:37:00]  Just think about Britain or France or Germany, these particular countries, because the same play is being run on those countries.
[00:37:11]  Nigel Farage, why are you objecting to millions of Muslims and Pakistanis and people from third world countries coming into your country?
[00:37:22]  There's neither Jew nor Greek.
[00:37:23]  Anybody can be British.
[00:37:25]  There's no such thing as British people.
[00:37:27]  And it's like, well, I think there is.
[00:37:30]  They're distinct people.
[00:37:31]  They talk pretty funny.
[00:37:33]  They're real.
[00:37:34]  They eat weird food.
[00:37:35]  They have beans for breakfast.
[00:37:36]  They're weird people.
[00:37:38]  And they are a real people.
[00:37:40]  No, you can't have a distinct country.
[00:37:43]  Why?
[00:37:44]  Because there's neither Jew nor Greek.
[00:37:46]  We're all one in Christ.
[00:37:47]  I mean, same thing with France, same thing with Germany.
[00:37:49]  All these countries, the same play is being run on them.
[00:37:53]  But what is the context of the verse?
[00:37:55]  It is not about your country.
[00:37:58]  It's not about can you have a country or not.
[00:38:02]  Are you allowed to have a distinct people or country?
[00:38:04]  Because, I mean, what is a country?
[00:38:05]  It's just a family writ large.
[00:38:08]  That's what a people is, right?
[00:38:10]  You have a family, and then you have an extended family, then you have a tribe, then you have a nation, right?
[00:38:18]  In Genesis, what does God promise Abraham?
[00:38:21]  He says, I will make many nations from you, right?
[00:38:25]  What does that mean?
[00:38:26]  And you see this, right?
[00:38:27]  There are other peoples that come into Israel, so it's not just distinctly like blood descent from Abraham, but the main part of it is.
[00:38:35]  Right, and this distinctiveness as a people, right?
[00:38:37]  You have, yeah, Ruth, the Moabitess, Rahab, people that are grafted into it, but the main body is the people that are descended from this man, right?
[00:38:47]  That's natural, that's normal, that's the way it works, right?
[00:38:50]  All the British people, right, they're just, they have the same fathers all the way back, right?
[00:38:55]  You see the table of the nations, it's just a family tree in Genesis 10.
[00:39:00]  That's not bad, that's not wrong to recognize these as realities, because the opposite is.
[00:39:07]  Nobody anywhere can have nations.
[00:39:10]  Nobody anywhere can have a distinct people.
[00:39:12]  You're not allowed to have Germany or France or Britain.
[00:39:15]  Those can't exist anymore.
[00:39:17]  We need to just take all 8 billion people as if they're a deck of cards and just shuffle them up.
[00:39:25]  That's what we want to do.
[00:39:26]  No distinct nations and peoples and cultures.
[00:39:30]  It's insanity.
[00:39:31]  It's nuts.
[00:39:32]  And what do they do?
[00:39:32]  They use this verse, Galatians 3 28, to justify it.
[00:39:35]  But Paul is not talking about this.
[00:39:37]  He's not saying that.
[00:39:38]  All right, you Greeks in Asia Minor, you need to get some more diversity.
[00:39:43]  You need to go elsewhere.
[00:39:44]  Some of you are going to have to go to Persia.
[00:39:46]  Some of you have to go to India.
[00:39:47]  You have to bring Indians here.
[00:39:49]  He's not saying that with this verse at all.
[00:39:53]  What is his point that he's making?
[00:39:54]  He's saying in Christ, in the kingdom of God, there's neither Jew nor Greek.
[00:39:59]  In Christ, in the church, there are not these distinctions.
[00:40:04]  And this is true, and this is wonderful.
[00:40:06]  You think about this.
[00:40:09]  In Nigeria, right now, there are many of our Christian brothers and sisters and little children that are being attacked by Muslims and murdered, destroyed.
[00:40:22]  And I have affinity for these people in a way that I don't when there are terrorist attacks in Pakistan against Muslims or Iraq.
[00:40:30]  But when Christians are attacked, those are our brothers.
[00:40:33]  We are heirs, just like they are.
[00:40:35]  We have the same inheritance with them in Christ.
[00:40:39]  And that is a beautiful and wonderful thing.
[00:40:42]  But that doesn't mean that all 8 billion people on planet Earth have a right to come to America and vote in our elections and collect our tax money and things like that.
[00:40:53]  That's insanity.
[00:40:54]  It's not what Paul is arguing for.
[00:40:56]  He's not arguing for that at all.
[00:40:58]  And secondly, you take that exegesis and you say, oh, there's no distinctions between peoples anymore.
[00:41:06]  Well, you also have other distinctions other than ethnic distinctions in that verse.
[00:41:13]  What are the other distinctions?
[00:41:14]  You have a distinction between male and female.
[00:41:18]  So if you take the same exegetical strategy as you look at Jews and Greeks and you universalize it to everything, not just within the kingdom of God, but to everything, then what does that mean?
[00:41:30]  It means that feminism is fine.
[00:41:33]  It means, your pastor referenced it earlier.
[00:41:36]  I'm sure you all saw it the spectacle yesterday.
[00:41:40]  I mean, just the travesty of it, especially the very end of the video as the president is getting into the SUV.
[00:41:49]  Did you just see the women Secret Service agents?
[00:41:53]  I mean, they're running around like chickens with their head cut off.
[00:41:56]  They're playing with their sunglasses.
[00:41:58]  They're not serious defenders of the president.
[00:42:03]  Maybe it's purposeful.
[00:42:03]  I don't know.
[00:42:04]  Why they do that, it's insanity to think that this job, where your job is to take a bullet for another man, would be given to a person that God did not design to be a warrior.
[00:42:16]  That's nuts.
[00:42:17]  But if you take the mainstream evangelical approach to Galatians 3 28, well, there's neither male nor female.
[00:42:26]  Why do you have a problem with that?
[00:42:27]  Do you hate women, Andrew?
[00:42:28]  No, actually, I love women.
[00:42:29]  I don't want them to take bullets for people, I don't want them going to war because I love women.
[00:42:34]  I love my wife and my daughters.
[00:42:36]  I don't want that.
[00:42:37]  That's insane.
[00:42:39]  That's nuts.
[00:42:40]  But you take that same verse.
[00:42:41]  Well, there's no, like, grace has destroyed nature.
[00:42:44]  So there's no longer Jew or Greek anywhere, anywhere at all.
[00:42:48]  Totally universalized.
[00:42:50]  Well, then there's no longer male nor female.
[00:42:52]  Which means, right, Bruce Jenner can become Caitlyn Jenner, and Galatians 3 28 says it's okay.
[00:42:58]  Right?
[00:42:59]  When you practice that, when you take that strategy and you take it away from the context of being about the church of Jesus Christ and about the kingdom of God.
[00:43:09]  Then I guess transgenderism is fine if you do that.
[00:43:13]  Of course, it's not.
[00:43:15]  It gives us a sense of revulsion to think that that could be the case.
[00:43:22]  That isn't at all.
[00:43:24]  That isn't true whatsoever.
[00:43:28]  So, these two major errors, I think hopefully you'll understand the points that I'm making.
[00:43:37]  What is it?
[00:43:37]  I mean, both of these things the idea that grace.
[00:43:40]  Restores nature, doesn't destroy it.
[00:43:43]  Grace restores nature that you can have.
[00:43:47]  What happens when the gospel goes to different nations that are distinct?
[00:43:50]  They might not like each other.
[00:43:53]  The Germans and the French and the French and the English historically have not gotten along very well.
[00:44:00]  But what happens as the leaven of the gospel makes its way through these particular nations where they don't get along with each other over centuries?
[00:44:08]  What happens?
[00:44:10]  You have peace because this nation and that nation and that nation.
[00:44:15]  They share Christ together.
[00:44:17]  They recognize you are my brother in Christ.
[00:44:19]  We are heirs of the kingdom of God.
[00:44:21]  So, I don't want to fight you.
[00:44:24]  I don't want to have war with you at all.
[00:44:28]  That's what it brings.
[00:44:30]  That's what it brings to us.
[00:44:33]  And it's a recognition of Christian tradition.
[00:44:36]  Nobody, 100 years ago, no one would read Galatians 3 28 and think, well, I guess this means there's no longer any ethnicities.
[00:44:46]  There's not people from different countries or different races or anything like that.
[00:44:49]  We can just say goodbye to those things.
[00:44:52]  No, what it means is this is the mechanism that you have peace between the different people.
[00:44:58]  This is the mechanism where you have peace between the differences.
[00:45:01]  You also have Revelation 7, where it says, up in heaven, at the end, there are many peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations.
[00:45:10]  They say, actually, at the conference yesterday, Stephen Wolfe referenced this verse.
[00:45:14]  They say, all right, your church needs to look like this.
[00:45:17]  Even if you live in a 98% white town, well, you need to have more diversity because that's what heaven looks like.
[00:45:22]  Your particular church.
[00:45:24]  You're being very bad and non Christian.
[00:45:26]  You don't look like Revelation 7 9.
[00:45:29]  And that, of course, is insane.
[00:45:31]  Nobody thought that way 100 years ago or 500 years ago.
[00:45:36]  The traditions that we have are good and solid and sturdy.
[00:45:41]  And it doesn't mean that our great great grandfathers were bad people.
[00:45:45]  Oh, they're evil, racist people because they didn't read Galatians 3 28 the same way that David French does.
[00:45:52]  No, of course not.
[00:45:54]  Of course not.
[00:45:55]  So, the main point that I'm trying to bring to you today is that tradition, the traditions of our fathers, they're good.
[00:46:05]  They're good.
[00:46:05]  To reach back to the traditions of Reformed, Protestant Christianity, to read the things they thought, to re encounter the world that they lived in is good and healthy for us because the world we live in today is insane and it actually affects the church and how we read.
[00:46:26]  The Bible.
[00:46:26]  That's why you have so many churches that say, oh, women pastors are fine, because that was just a cultural thing back when Paul was, you know, writing, and we're so progressive and we're way better than them now.
[00:46:36]  I mean, don't you know they had slaves?
[00:46:40]  So they're bad people.
[00:46:41]  We were doing things the right way, right?
[00:46:44]  Our world is messed up by things like that.
[00:46:48]  Our world is in rough shape.
[00:46:50]  So going back to these traditions is good.
[00:46:53]  And in fact, I think.
[00:46:57]  The phenomenon, and maybe many of you are troubled by this, I'm kind of troubled by this, or more than kind of, is this phenomenon of many young evangelical Christian people, my age and younger, 20s, 30s, that grow up in evangelical churches.
[00:47:14]  What's the thing that happens, especially if they move more right wing politically?
[00:47:18]  What do they do?
[00:47:21]  They go Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox.
[00:47:25]  Many of you probably have friends that have done just that.
[00:47:29]  What are the reasons why?
[00:47:31]  That they do this.
[00:47:32]  One of the main reasons is like, well, I want something grounded in tradition.
[00:47:38]  I want something grounded in tradition.
[00:47:39]  Maybe there's aesthetic reasons and things like that as well.
[00:47:43]  But I want something grounded in tradition.
[00:47:46]  Because what did they grow up going to?
[00:47:48]  They grew up going to either a big, giant, mega church evangelical thing where it's a TED talk and a rock concert and it's just totally vapid.
[00:47:57]  There's nothing there at all.
[00:47:59]  Or the other alternative was going to the The really heavy doctrinal Bible teaching church, which actually was just, we're going to talk about blood moons and red heifers and black helicopters and things like that every single week.
[00:48:14]  That's all they do, right?
[00:48:16]  Neither of those things are grounded in the tradition of Protestantism whatsoever.

=== Guided by Tradition and Scripture (06:59) ===

[00:48:23]  Neither of those things.
[00:48:24]  So that's why they flee.
[00:48:25]  That's why they go.
[00:48:27]  But what are we doing here?
[00:48:29]  In my church, what are we doing?
[00:48:30]  What are you doing in your church, in many churches like ours?
[00:48:36]  I think it's well known because of your pastor's YouTube channel that you guys are a 1689 church.
[00:48:40]  Is that correct?
[00:48:41]  1689 church?
[00:48:43]  We're a 1689 church.
[00:48:45]  That's beautiful.
[00:48:45]  That's wonderful.
[00:48:47]  That's 1689.
[00:48:48]  That was a long time ago.
[00:48:51]  And that means these are sturdy traditions that have been tested by hundreds of years and they have held up.
[00:48:59]  What do you have in the big box evangelical megachurches?
[00:49:02]  You have traditions that are like five weeks old and they're going to chase the next trend.
[00:49:06]  Those are your traditions.
[00:49:07]  Whatever is trendy last week.
[00:49:10]  Young people, especially now, when they see how bad things are, they don't want that.
[00:49:15]  They want something that is deep, that is grounded in truth and in tradition.
[00:49:20]  So that's why they leave and go elsewhere.
[00:49:23]  And so, what are we doing when we look at verses this way, in the traditional way?
[00:49:29]  We are saying our great, great, great grandfathers, the things that they believed, they were actually right.
[00:49:38]  We are honoring them by saying, you know what?
[00:49:41]  You were correct.
[00:49:43]  You were correct about what you believed.
[00:49:46]  And what we are doing now, our generation, the generations that preceded us, we rebelled against what you believed.
[00:49:53]  We thought we knew better, and we were wrong.
[00:49:56]  That's what returning to tradition, recovering tradition is.
[00:49:59]  And of course, especially within evangelicalism, we have this antipathy toward tradition.
[00:50:05]  We think tradition, that's bad.
[00:50:08]  Oh, the Roman Catholics, they have tradition.
[00:50:12]  And that's bad.
[00:50:13]  They turn their brains off.
[00:50:14]  They don't read the Bible and they just fall on tradition.
[00:50:15]  Well, I mean, the caricature is kind of true.
[00:50:18]  I mean, I know Catholics are going to be angry with me saying that, but it's kind of true.
[00:50:22]  It's like, well, yeah, we have the catechism.
[00:50:24]  We don't need to read the Bible.
[00:50:25]  Why are you reading?
[00:50:26]  I need a priest to read that thing.
[00:50:27]  You're not qualified.
[00:50:28]  They do do that often when you argue with them.
[00:50:32]  But what do we do?
[00:50:33]  What do we do?
[00:50:34]  We don't say, oh, I'm a robot just bound by tradition.
[00:50:38]  I'm not going to read the scriptures for myself.
[00:50:40]  No, we're guided by the tradition.
[00:50:42]  We're guided by the tradition.
[00:50:43]  The analogy I would use is right now I'm reframing out the basement of my house.
[00:50:52]  I'm framing out the basement of my house.
[00:50:54]  And if all I had, if I was a total novice, I've never picked up a hammer in my entire life.
[00:51:03]  If all I had was just a pile of two by fours and studs and nails, and it's like, all right, I'm going to go try to frame this thing up, make it look nice.
[00:51:15]  I'd never been taught how to do construction.
[00:51:18]  There were no YouTube videos available to watch.
[00:51:21]  I didn't have anyone to teach me.
[00:51:23]  And I just tried to throw that thing together, it would look like modern art.
[00:51:27]  It would not look good.
[00:51:29]  It wouldn't be straight and plumb and level.
[00:51:32]  It would be like, is that a dog or a person?
[00:51:34]  I don't really know.
[00:51:36]  It would be a mess.
[00:51:37]  It would look like a lot of the buildings in Austin.
[00:51:40]  And it would be bad.
[00:51:44]  It would be terrible.
[00:51:46]  But what do I have?
[00:51:48]  I'm guided by what?
[00:51:50]  By tradition.
[00:51:53]  My dad taught me, you want to keep this level, son, and you want these boards to be square and straight.
[00:52:00]  Well, he didn't reinvent how to build houses on his own spontaneously one day.
[00:52:06]  Somebody taught him.
[00:52:07]  And somebody taught that guy, and somebody taught that guy, and on and on and on and on.
[00:52:11]  That's what tradition is.
[00:52:14]  It's guided by history, by your past.
[00:52:18]  It is, I think Roger Scruton is a quote of his that I love.
[00:52:21]  What is tradition?
[00:52:23]  It's history's answer, enduring answer to enduring questions.
[00:52:30]  That's what it is.
[00:52:32]  We have that.
[00:52:32]  We could draw on those things.
[00:52:34]  We can go back and say, well, what did Herman Bavink think about feminism, or what we would call feminism today?
[00:52:41]  What did he think about those things?
[00:52:43]  What did John Calvin think?
[00:52:44]  What did Charles Spurgeon think?
[00:52:45]  We could go back and think, what do these guys think about all of these?
[00:52:50]  What do they think about nations?
[00:52:51]  Were nations good?
[00:52:53]  Was it good for nations to become Christian?
[00:52:57]  Was that a good thing?
[00:52:58]  Did they think that was okay?
[00:53:00]  Of course they did.
[00:53:01]  Of course they did.
[00:53:02]  We could go back to these traditions.
[00:53:04]  And the more that we do, the more that our churches do, the more that our churches recover a traditional understanding of how to read the Bible and are guided by fathers who are long dead.
[00:53:17]  The more and more, especially young people, will flock to our churches and want to hear what we have to say.
[00:53:27]  So, in closing, and it's a real closing, I don't know if your pastor is like me, right?
[00:53:32]  Sometimes when I say in closing, in conclusion, that's the alert that you have 30 minutes left.
[00:53:39]  But I'm really going to wrap up here.
[00:53:41]  I'll really wrap up.
[00:53:45]  On your traditions, the more the authority of Scripture actually comes out.
[00:53:52]  The more the authority of Scripture actually comes out because you're able to read it and understand it, and it becomes more authoritative.
[00:53:59]  Because if every single person here is just reinventing the wheel every time they open up the Bible, you're going to have, I mean, how many people?
[00:54:06]  Like 300 people?
[00:54:07]  You're going to have 300 different Bible interpretations if you're all being guided just completely by yourself.
[00:54:13]  That's the critique that the Catholics have of us.
[00:54:16]  And it's erroneous, it's a caricature of what we believe.
[00:54:20]  What are we guided by?
[00:54:22]  Scripture is the ultimate final authority, but our traditions guide us to that.
[00:54:29]  It's just like having your dad or your grandpa help you learn how to do a thing.
[00:54:35]  That's what tradition in the Protestant sense is.
[00:54:39]  We're having our grandpas and our great grandpas and our great great grandpas say, hey, here's how you read this passage.
[00:54:45]  Maybe you'll disagree.
[00:54:46]  Maybe it's like, oh, maybe there's a little part that's wrong.
[00:54:49]  The Reformation, it's Semper Reformata.
[00:54:51]  The Reformation keeps going on.
[00:54:52]  We are going to continue to learn how to read the Bible better, but not by tearing down everything that they have done in the past, but by building it up and adding on to it.
[00:55:03]  So lean into the traditions that have been laid forward for us, and God is going to bless us.
[00:55:10]  He's going to see this inheritance that Paul talks about in Galatians come to fruition.
[00:55:18]  He is going to give us that.
[00:55:20]  What is going to happen?
[00:55:21]  What does that inheritance entail?

=== America Belongs to Christ (01:07) ===

[00:55:22]  Part of it.
[00:55:24]  Part of it is, right, Psalm 2, ask of me, and the nations are your inheritance.
[00:55:28]  Well, we live in a particular nation, a particular people, and what is Psalm 2 saying, right?
[00:55:33]  This particular nation at this point in time, what is it?
[00:55:38]  It is part of the inheritance of Jesus Christ.
[00:55:41]  It belongs to him.
[00:55:44]  It belongs to him.
[00:55:44]  And who else does it belong to?
[00:55:47]  For you are all sons of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
[00:55:50]  And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
[00:55:54]  So that Psalm 2 promise, right, who does America belong to?
[00:55:57]  It belongs to Jesus.
[00:55:58]  And his people, Jesus and his church, Jesus and the sons of God, which are Christians.
[00:56:06]  And so, how does this inheritance come to fruition?
[00:56:09]  It comes through the faith of his people, the repentance of his people, the preaching of his people, the truth being made known to our whole nation, and then we will win this inheritance for our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:56:27]  So, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.