Please turn with me tonight to Galatians 3 and 4, as we will read, beginning at verse 1 of chapter 3 through verse 7 of Galatians chapter 4. Considering in a particular way, verses 4 and 5 of chapter 4, along with our confession in Lord's Day 14, if you would also then turn the back of the Psalter hymnal to page 21. To page 21, Lord's Day 14, where we find recorded another of the articles of our confession of the Apostles' Creed concerning our Lord Jesus Christ? And we will confess those answers first together. Questions 35 and 36. Question 35 asks, What does it mean that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary? That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to Himself through the working of the Holy Spirit from the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary a truly human nature so that He might become David's true descendant in all things like us, His brothers, except for sin. How does the holy conception and birth of Christ benefit you? He is our mediator. And with His innocence and perfect holiness, He removes from God's sight my sin, mine since I was conceived. Galatians 3, beginning at verse 1, as we hear now the word of our God. You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Have you suffered so much for nothing, if it really was for nothing? Does God give you His Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you heard? Consider Abraham. He believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham. All nations will be blessed through you. So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law. Clearly no one is justified before God by the law because the righteous will live by faith. The law is not based on faith. On the contrary, the man who does these things will live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person who is Christ. What I mean is this. The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise. But God, in His grace, gave it to Abraham through a promise. What then was the purpose of the law? It was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was put into effect through angels by a mediator. A mediator, however, does not represent just one party, but God is one. Is the law therefore opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not. For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin so that what was promised, being given through faith in Jesus Christ, might be given to those who believe. Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. What I'm saying is that as long as the heir is a child, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. He is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. But when the time had fully come, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, Born under law to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. May God add his blessing to the reading and the preaching of his word tonight. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, recently my wife had a conversation with someone who spoke about an acquaintance who was dying. And in the course of their conversation, this person said of this acquaintance that this acquaintance, that he has made peace with God. Now that's an interesting statement. And of course, I don't know. I don't know this individual, so I don't know what that individual meant by that. I don't know by what standard this individual had made peace with God. And I'm not going to even begin to judge what that means for that person. But we do know that there are many, beloved, who believe that we can come to be at peace with God, that we can make peace with God based on themselves, ourselves, based on what they have done or not done, based on whether they were not so bad and whether they lived a good life, and that any of these things can then give them true happiness now and as well secure a ticket to heaven, as it were, for them when they face death one day. The believers in Galatia, we know, were being tempted to look at themselves. Again, Paul begins chapter 3, you foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes, Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. You have been taught the truth. You know the truth. But who has, as it were, set you under a spell by the things that they have said? Now Paul knew that the believers in Galatia were being influenced by Judaizers. Those who taught that in order to be righteous before God, it was Christ plus something else. Not just Christ alone, but Christ and something that we need to do. They taught that we needed to do, the believers needed to do the works of the law, circumcision or ceremonial laws. And Paul here, you see, as it were, gets tough with the Galatian believers and reminds them that Christ added to is really Christ replaced. Christ added to is really Christ replaced. And he reminds them that Christ replaced results in no peace with God. Because we have only, and we can only, offend God. And Paul beautifully here teaches the truth about the believer's relationship to the law of God as well, that there is only one way to be at peace with God as he preaches of a Savior for you. A Savior for you promised by God. A Savior sent by God. A Savior to satisfy God. And of course for Paul, not only here in his letter to the Galatians, but in all of his epistles, it is no secret for Paul as to the identity of this Savior as he constantly draws the eyes, the ears of his hearers, the thoughts of his hearers back to the Lord Jesus Christ. He began his epistle in verse 3 of chapter 1, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age. And he says specifically in Romans 5.1, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God. How? Through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who in the first place was promised by God. And He was promised by God as a blessing to believers, Paul says in chapter 3, verse 9. So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. He talks about God's covenant promise to Abraham. He talks about Abraham's offspring, his descendants. In Genesis 17, verse 1, the Lord says, I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. And in Genesis 22, verse 18, the Lord says, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me. Now back there in Genesis, it seems to be talking about Abraham's physical descendants. But notice Paul's explanation here to the Galatians. And remember, Paul lived in the time of the fulfillment in redemptive history. He didn't live in the time of shadows and promises. He lived in the time of the fulfillment. And under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he shows that this promised salvation to Abraham was to Abraham's spiritual descendants, to true believers. In verse 7, understand then that those who believe are children of Abraham. And he also goes on to show that this blessing promised to Abraham and to his seed is concentrated in one person, namely Jesus Christ. Chapter 3.16, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person who is Christ. He teaches clearly the promised salvation is to all believers and that that blessing is concentrated in one person, Jesus Christ, in Him alone. Abraham's descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, as the sand on the seashore. The many would be blessed through this One who was promised. And He was promised from the beginning. And that promise of the Messiah was not only given in the beginning, but we know that it was rehearsed. It was spoken again over and over and over again throughout the Old Testament period. It's the testimony of Scripture. And we know the verses, but it's good for us to rehearse them once again. Let's start at the beginning. In Galatians 3, verse 15, we read, that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the seed of the serpent. In Genesis 49, verse 10, when Jacob is blessing his children before his death, we read, he says, the scepter will not depart from Judah until he comes to whom it belongs, pointing forward to the Messiah. In Deuteronomy 18, verse 18, we read of the promise of a prophet like Moses. In 2 Samuel, David is given the promise of a son to sit on his throne forever. And of course, we cannot overlook Isaiah. Isaiah 7, verse 14, Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel, meaning God with us, we know. Chapter 9, verse 6, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given. All of chapter 53. But notice verse 5, He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him. Zechariah 9, verse 9, Your king comes to you righteous and having salvation, and then Zechariah goes on to talk about the fact that he's coming lowly, riding on a donkey. And then Micah chapter 5, It speaks of a ruler to come from Bethlehem. We know those verses. Those are only a sampling. We know those verses which clearly point out the promise of a Savior. And we know that those verses are fulfilled in the New Testament. The evidence is clear. God promised and He reminded over and over and over again of His promise to send a Savior. And Paul points out that God kept that promise. And that Jesus Christ, who was crucified, as Paul says in chapter 3, verse 1, is the fulfillment of that promise. He is the one, not only promised by God, but in the second place, sent by God. And as Paul makes clear, he was sent by God when the time had fully come. Or in the fullness of time, as some translations have it. Now, of course, there are a number of man-made speculations as to what that means when the time had fully come or what made it a time of fullness. And these speculations include that the spiritual state of the Jews was at an all-time low, that heathenism was at an all-time high, that because of the advancement and the building of Roman roads, that it made it easy for the spread of the gospel. You see, beloved, all of those things may certainly be true. But there is absolutely no evidence in the Word of God that those are part of God's reason for this particular time. Very simply, when the time had fully come, was a time predetermined, a time fixed by God, a time that He knew would be right for the world and for His people, a time for which He prepared them and the whole world. And Paul helps us to understand that a little bit in the first couple of verses of chapter 4. There he is speaking, as we infer, about a wealthy father who presumably had died. And also he talks there about a minor child, a child who was underage, but that child was the rightful heir of the father. But while that child was a minor, while he was underage, as verse 2 says, he is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. The Father set the date. The Father set the time that He had decided for the heir to receive the inheritance. And the point for us is that God set the time. God determined the date for His Son to send His Son to come and accomplish His work. And when the time had fully come, He sent Him as Savior. As Paul points out here, He sent Him as the one we needed. as the only one that would do for us. God sent His Son, born of a woman. First of all, He is God's Son. And boys and girls, you know that that means that Jesus is God Himself. That means that He existed from eternity. He was the Word of creation. And the word sent here has the idea to accomplish a particular mission. He was sent to accomplish the mission that God the Father had for him. But not only is he God's son, but he would be Mary's son. He was born of a woman. And again, boys and girls, you know that that simply means that he is really human. That's which Paul talks about here. When the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman. We celebrate that, you know, at what we call Christmastime. When our Savior was born. The One to come who was one person with two natures, fully God and fully man. And of course, though Paul does not specify here the divine conception by the Holy Spirit and the virgin birth, the Catechism accurately summarizes the teaching of Scripture, some of which we've already looked at, Isaiah 7, verse 14. The Catechism accurately summarizes the teaching of Scripture with regard to the coming of the Savior promised and sent by God. What does it mean that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary? That the eternal Son of God, who is and remains true and eternal God, took to Himself, through the working of the Holy Spirit, from the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, a truly human nature, so that he might become David's true descendant in all things like us his brothers except for sin. If you go to Luke 1 and read about the episode where the angel comes to Mary, basically that's what the angel says. The one to come upon you is the Holy Spirit. The one to be conceived in you is by the Holy Spirit. He shall be called the Son of the Most High. He shall sit on the throne of His father David. He is the one that God promised all throughout the Old Testament period. He is the one we needed. And beloved, He had to be both human and divine to save us. And boys and girls, He had to be human because man sinned and therefore man must pay for sin. The writer of Hebrews says the blood of bulls and goats and sheep and doves was not sufficient. All of those Old Testament sacrifices in which animals were sacrificed and their blood was shed, that blood served a purpose, as it were. It covered in the sight of God, as it were, the sins of God's people. But it did not pay for those sins. It pointed forward to the precious blood of the true Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, the One to come, who would be human and divine. He had to be human because man sinned, and therefore man must pay. but He had to be a perfectly righteous human, and therefore He must be divine in order to be that perfectly righteous man. In order to offer the perfect sacrifice of infinite value that we needed. And as well to be able to bear in His humanity the wrath of God against sin. Beloved, He had to be this one alone in order in the third place to satisfy God. Question 36. How does the holy conception and birth of Christ benefit you? He is our mediator. And with His innocence and perfect holiness, He removes from God's sight my sin, mine, since I was conceived. But when the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. He was promised by God, sent by God, to satisfy God by becoming subject to the law. He was born under law. And beloved, that includes, on the one hand, a personal obligation for our Savior to keep the law of God, to obey that law perfectly, to obey the commands of God, the commands that God had given to His people perfectly. And He was indeed perfectly righteous, the Bible says. But it also includes a corporate duty on behalf of those for whom He came to take upon Himself our sin and to bear the penalty for us lawbreakers, the penalty that was against us. He satisfied God by giving perfect obedience to God. because of which alone He was qualified to and did pay the eternal debt that we owe to God. And He did so by taking our eternal punishment as He suffered the agony of hell on the cross. As Paul says in verse 13 of chapter 3, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. He took upon Himself, boys and girls, our sin. he became as a sinner himself, as it were. He took yours and mine and paid for it. And this, beloved, he had to do to satisfy God for us because we were under law. We were under law. Now, beloved, nowhere, nowhere does Paul in this letter to Galatians or in any of his epistles? Or does the Bible, for that matter, anywhere? Nowhere does Paul paint a rosy picture of the law and its usefulness in bringing us peace or us making peace through the law with God. Nowhere. In fact, the very opposite. He makes it very clear the law does not save us, that we cannot earn our salvation by obedience to the law of God, but instead the law lays a curse on us. The law exposes us. He reminds us in chapter 3 of the purpose of the law. He speaks of Abraham's inheritance that was confirmed to him by God's covenant promise 430 years before God gave the law on Mount Sinai. And Paul makes it clear that the giving of that law did not replace God's promise. For securing that inheritance. Chapter 3, verse 18, For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise. But God in His grace gave it to Abraham through a promise. That law did not replace the promise for securing that inheritance. But instead, as verse 19 says, But the law was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred had come. Interesting. The law was added because of transgressions. How do we understand that? Paul is saying there, beloved, that the law was given to show us our sin. The law was given to highlight our unrighteousness. The law was given to awaken a sense of guilt in us. As Paul says in Romans 3, verse 20, Through the law, we become conscious of sin. If there is no standard by which to measure ourselves, we do not know that we are sinners. Paul says, I would not have known what it means to covet if the law had said you shall not covet. The law is like a magnifying lens, as someone has said, that does not actually increase the number of dirty spots that defile a garment, but makes them stand out more clearly and reveals many more of them than one is able to see with the naked eye. We cannot blame our sin on the law. The law itself does not increase our sin. But the law points out our sin. It could not remove it. It could not give righteousness. And far from satisfy God, and far from redeem us, the law holds one captive, As Paul says in verse 22, but the Scripture declares that the whole world is a prisoner of sin. Verse 23, Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. In chapter 4, verse 3, So also when we were children, we were in slavery under the basic principles of the world. As the law makes us conscious of sin, we are held captive. As someone has said, that sin is the jail keeper who holds all men under the sentence of condemnation. These men are as truly chained as are prisoners with iron bands around their legs, bands that are fastened to chains that are cemented into the walls of their cells. Such spiritual convicts are unable to break their fetters. There is no way that you and I can earn righteousness before God. By keeping the law. You see, beloved, the law was given not to give you and me a false hope of gaining favor with God by it. It was not given. It was given not to give a false hope of the promise of salvation by obedience to the law. But God gave us the law to show how dependent we are upon and how much we desperately need God's promise who is Jesus Christ. And therefore the law is to point to Christ. Again, verse 19, it was added because of transgressions until the seed to whom the promise referred had come. Again, chapter 4, verse 2, he, that is the child, is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. And Paul kind of explains that before in chapter 3, verse 24 when he says, So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. You see, beloved, only when one realizes there's sin and how offensive that sin is against a holy God who is also judge and whose holiness will have nothing to do with unholiness. Only when this knowledge is applied to the heart by the power of the Holy Spirit by faith, will that one then cry out for deliverance? Is the law useful? Yes. It shows us what it cannot accomplish, what we cannot accomplish through it. And it drives the sinner to cry with Paul, what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? And it is the Holy Spirit of God who causes the believer to look outside Himself to Jesus Christ, the Savior who was promised by God, who was sent by God, and who alone satisfied God by keeping that law perfectly and paying our debt. And by doing so, He secured our new position. The gems have already beautifully reminded us of that tonight through that litany. Verse 5. To redeem those under law that we might receive the full rights of sons. Now in the Bible, the idea of redemption in the Bible is to pay a price to recover property that had gone to someone outside the family and to bring that property back to the one who had the original claim to it. By taking our curse upon Himself and by paying the perfect ransom price to release us as prisoners through paying the price of His blood. By doing that, our Lord Jesus Christ loosened the chains of sin and the chains of sin and eternal death and hell fell off of those who believe in Him. And we have been brought back into peaceful fellowship with the One who had an original claim to us from before the creation of the world. And beloved, because of that, we have been crowned with the choicest blessing. And that choicest blessing, we can summarize with one word. And that word is adoption. Adoption. Again, Paul says that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. The Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son. And since you are a son, God has made you also an heir. Now boys and girls, some of you may remember from last Sunday evening that we talked about adoption, what that means. You know what it means, I trust, in this life when one is taken into a family into which they were not born. They're taken into a new family and ordinarily those old family connections are cut off and they are given a new name, the name of that new family and they're given the rights and the privileges and the blessings of that new family. And I believe Paul helps us to understand how glorious this is when he says in 2 Corinthians 8, verse 9, For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich. And that's adoption. Being adopted into the family of God. How rich we are. You see, all that the law keeps us from, all that the law prevents us from accomplishing, our Lord Jesus Christ has secured for us the riches of God Himself. The riches of eternal glory. The riches of that guaranteed life forever. The riches of God's protection and loving kindness and care for us forever and ever. Never to be taken away. Never to be lost. Our status as children of God, beloved, will never be taken away from us. By faith, only faith in Jesus Christ alone, we are justified in the sight of God, considered righteous by Him, and been given promised salvation. You see, He alone gives true happiness. And He is our only ticket to heaven. And Paul would have us understand, beloved, that just as the law does not get us saved, Just as we cannot get saved by means of the law. In the very same way, the law does not keep us saved. It's only Christ's innocence and perfect holiness that removes my sin from God's sight forever. We are sons and daughters of God. And as sons and daughters of God, beloved, it is our desire to uphold and honor and to promote the family name and to point others to our loving Heavenly Father. And as sons and daughters of the Most High God, it is our delight to offer grateful obedience to Him and to strive, as the girls reminded us, to live as His children with confidence that when we fail, our full rights of sons includes humbly approaching our Heavenly Father in faith on the basis of our Savior, promised by God, sent by God, to satisfy God for you and me with the promise, with the riches that he will forgive. Gems, Jesus indeed is all the world to me. Is it any wonder? Because he is our Savior, the one God promised, the one God sent, the one who alone has paid for your sins and mine for those who believe? Is it any wonder? Because He rescued you and me as believers from a world of darkness and brought us forever into the world of God's grace and glory. And therefore, beloved, there is only one way to make peace with God. And that is through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray. father we as your children are amazed as we consider the whole of your word that which you have given to us on the pages of scripture your story the story of your redeeming love for your children which we find from beginning to end and such a marvelous story of your promise of a Savior. You kept that promise and He has done His work powerfully and effectively. And therefore we can sing with confidence in Christ alone our hope is found. And Father, may that not only be our hope but the hope that we share that others too might embrace by the power of your Holy Spirit through faith. oh Lord God continue to build your church continue to make her ready for the day of Christ Jesus continue to make each one of us ready for that day and may we delight to see our bridegroom come again for us in all of his glory in Jesus name we pray these things Amen