Join us as we take a look at Galatians 3:15-29, where Paul addresses the problem of Judaicizing the New Testament, and how this relates to the church in general, and specifically, the Church in general.
00:27:48.340They are brought into Christ in faith,
00:27:51.540and the Gentiles, all the other people of the world,
00:27:53.940they're brought into Christ in faith, and there's no distinction between them. They are both equally
00:27:59.320heirs in the royal family. It's not the Jews are up here, and the Gentiles are down here. No, it's0.98
00:28:04.840like, no, you're one. You're together in this, right? There's neither slave nor free, right? In that
00:28:11.020in ancient society, this actually is controversial, right? In ancient society, you had lots and lots
00:28:17.380of slaves, maybe 20, 30 percent of the Roman Empire, more than that even, at different times,
00:28:23.940were slaves, right? We're owned by someone else, right? At the bottom of the social status. And
00:28:29.400then you had various gradations of free men and patricians and so forth. There's a very rigid
00:28:34.440hierarchy in the ancient world, right? In America, we don't like hierarchy. It's bad. We don't like
00:28:42.240social classes and things like this, even though it exists. And what is he saying here, right?
00:28:49.140Whether you are a CEO, right? Whether you're Elon Musk, you're down in Austin and one of the richest
00:28:55.340men on the planet, if you were a Christian, right? Or if you are just a part-time worker at0.88
00:29:02.240McDonald's, right? Everything in between or unemployed, right? A homeless guy, but you believe
00:29:08.680in Jesus, right? Everything in between, you are all one in Christ. That hierarchy in the kingdom
00:29:14.480does not exist. It does not exist within the kingdom, within the royal family of God. There's
00:29:22.340neither male nor female, right? What is the major point of contention in Galatians? It's over
00:29:27.940circumcision, right? Well, who gets circumcised in the law of Moses? Only men, only men do, right?0.57
00:29:36.060only men are really these covenant members. The women are by virtue of their family status, but0.98
00:29:42.680it's the men who get circumcised, and they're the real heirs of all of this. But in the new covenant,0.92
00:29:50.280that's not the case. That's not the case, right? They inherit along with the men. They have this
00:29:55.780status, right? You think of sons of God, right? Where in verse 26, you should think of sons of God
00:30:02.020as a title, right, as a title that someone holds, like duke or prince or king, right? Sons of God
00:30:10.420is this royal title that is held equally by Jews, by Greeks, by slaves, by free men, by men and
00:30:19.020women, all of them together in Christ. And so a little bit later, right, we'll go back to verse 28
00:30:26.060and talk about what it doesn't mean, right, what it doesn't mean, but that's what it does mean
00:30:30.100positively right that's the context of the verse and then finally right verse 29 right verse 29
00:30:37.680and if you are christ's then you are abraham's seed lowercase s you are abraham's seed and heirs
00:30:46.620according to the promise so the question here is right you read genesis 12 genesis 17 right and it
00:30:56.060says, right, those who bless you, Abraham, I will bless, and those who curse you, Abraham, I will
00:31:01.940curse, right? Who is that to? Who is that to? Is it to a nation-state in the eastern Mediterranean
00:31:09.300today, or is it a particular ethnic group all throughout the world today, right? Who do those
00:31:14.740promises? Those promises are still active today. Who do they belong to, right? Paul tells us right
00:31:20.280here in Galatians, they belong to Jesus Christ and his people, right? Those who belong to him0.98
00:31:29.480by faith, those promises belong to Jesus and his church. So you read those promises in Genesis
00:31:38.800to Abraham and to his seed. Those are promises to Jesus and to his people. You read that when
00:31:45.520it's his seed. It's like, that's, oh, oh, oh, oh, that's us right there. It's us, right? It is to us
00:31:52.740alone by faith in Jesus, right? That's this point, these promises, right? These promises that God has
00:31:59.940made are to his people, right? And Paul doesn't say here, well, some of the promises are to
00:32:06.480to the church and some of them are to other people, right? Even the promise of the land,
00:32:12.040right the promised land who gets that land well the entire world is now the promised land of
00:32:20.500canaan that belongs to jesus right jesus this is what jesus says at the end of matthew in the great
00:32:25.280commission right all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me right what does that mean
00:32:29.480the entire planet is my inheritance right this is what what god says to him the father says to him
00:32:38.240that David records in Psalm 2, right, what does the father say to the son? Ask of me and I will
00:32:44.060give the nations for your inheritance. Not just one stretch of land in a particular place, right?
00:32:49.920It doesn't mean that promises null and void because that is one of the nations. It's now
00:32:54.580all of the nations are the inheritance of Jesus Christ and his people and the sons of God, his
00:33:01.840royal family right his co-heirs with him right that's when he's adopting us that's what he's
00:33:09.720doing he's saying i am writing you into the will and you get the same inheritance as me
00:33:15.060and that inheritance includes the promises that were made to my father abraham right that is what
00:33:23.320it means right which is right everything i've said here right runs very contrary to what many
00:33:30.040modern Christians believe today. We believe, whoa, Old Covenant's still operating out here
00:33:35.160somewhere, somehow. And those promises, those belong to not to the church or to Jesus. They
00:33:40.880belong to people by virtue of their DNA or by virtue of their religious traditions. They don't1.00
00:33:46.560belong to the church. But you read straightforwardly what Paul says right here, and you can't come away
00:33:53.320with any other point, right? This is why the church for, until the mid-19th century, this is
00:34:00.180why the church believed this, right? The same thing that I'm saying everywhere, right? Whether
00:34:04.220you're Catholic or Orthodox or Protestant, a reformer, right? Right up until the middle of
00:34:10.240the 19th century. This is what we, yep, we are, we are the church. We are united to Christ who is
00:34:17.700the true Israel, and he is the inheritor of the promises to Abraham. That makes sense. Paul said
00:34:24.280it. I'm going to believe it, right? But today, right, we don't believe those things, right? That's
00:34:29.280the first, the first error I wanted to address. Let's see how much time I have here. How much
00:34:34.700time do we have for the other ones? The second one, and Joel's looking at me. He's like, just keep
00:34:39.520going. You go for two more hours. It's fine. Lunch will be cold, but it's okay. The second
00:34:47.000error, right, going back to Galatians 3.28, the second error is, right, you read, right, anytime,
00:34:58.400anytime you make the point, right, now today in like contemporary politics, there's a lot of
00:35:03.440controversy over what exactly is America, right, what is America, is America, you know, is America
00:35:10.520a people? No, it's not a people, a particular people, anyone could be American, you just have
00:35:16.240to believe the right propositions you just have to really love freedom and that's not how the
00:35:22.700original people that founded the country believed right they believed that americans were a
00:35:26.600particular people that settled the country and they would of course they would they would bring
00:35:30.840more people here that they thought these people will fit into what we are doing uh they can
00:35:36.020these people will assimilate and so forth so it wasn't totally restrictive but it still was very
00:35:41.320restrictive. They understood themselves as a particular people. We are Americans as a real
00:35:46.520definite people. But you make that point now within, especially within modern evangelicalism,
00:35:53.840where you say, I don't think America is a propositional nation. I think it's a distinct
00:35:57.340people, right? And mainstream evangelicals, big Eva evangelicals, what's the first thing they do?0.59
00:36:04.800the very well they call you racist uh and the second thing they do is they pull out their
00:36:11.780bibles and what verse do they turn to right what verse do they turn they turn to galatians 3 28
00:36:17.960they will say i can't believe yeah you're racist right here's what paul says galatians 3 28 there's
00:36:25.020neither jew nor greek we're all one in christ so that means you need to have infinity immigration
00:36:32.200into your country, right? That's, I mean, it's funny, but that's really what they do. That's1.00
00:36:36.920really what they say. That's really what they believe. There's neither Jew nor Greek, right?
00:36:42.200Therefore, there's no such thing as a distinct American people. And if you believe that,
00:36:47.320you are very bad, right? You are sinning. You're committing this heinous sin. But what is the
00:36:53.880context of this verse, right? The context of this verse is not, I mean, take away America. Just
00:37:00.900think about Britain or France or Germany, these particular countries, because the same play is
00:37:07.240being run on those countries, right? Nigel Farage, why are you objecting to millions of Muslims and
00:37:16.380Pakistanis and people from third world countries coming into your country, right? There's neither1.00
00:37:22.980Jew nor Greek. Anybody can be British, right? There's no such thing as British people. And it's
00:37:28.200like well I think there is uh they're distinct people they talk pretty funny um they're real
00:37:33.680they they eat weird food they have beans for breakfast they're weird people uh and they are
00:37:38.760a real people right no you can't have you can't have a distinct country right why because there's0.96
00:37:45.280neither Jew nor Greek we're all one in Christ I mean same thing with France same thing with Germany
00:37:49.260all these countries the same play is being run on them but what is what is the context of the verse
00:37:55.220it is not about your country right it's not about can you have a country or not are you allowed to
00:38:02.820have a distinct people or country because i mean what is a country it's just a family writ large
00:38:06.860it's just it's that's what a people is right you have a family and then you have an extended
00:38:12.320family then you have a tribe then you have a nation right that's right in in genesis right
00:38:19.500what does God promise Abraham? He says, I will make many nations from you, right? What does that0.77
00:38:25.760mean? And you see this, right? There are other peoples that come into Israel. So it's not just
00:38:29.820distinctly like blood descent from Abraham, but the main part of it is, right? And this distinctiveness
00:38:36.920as a people, right? You have, yeah, Ruth, the Moabitess, Rahab, people that are grafted into it.0.89
00:38:43.140But the main body is the people that are descended from this man, right? That's natural. That's
00:38:48.380normal that's the way it works right all all the british people right they're just they have the
00:38:52.780same fathers all the way back right you see the table of the nations it's just a family tree in
00:38:57.900genesis 10 genesis 10 right that's not bad that's not wrong to recognize these as realities
00:39:03.720because the opposite is nobody anywhere can have nations right nobody anywhere can have
00:39:11.300a distinct people you're not allowed to have germany or france or britain
00:39:14.340those can't exist anymore we need to just take all eight billion people as if they're a deck of
00:39:21.640cards right and just shuffle them up that's what we want to do right no no distinct nations of
00:39:27.900peoples and cultures that's no that's that's it's insanity it's nuts and what do they do they use
00:39:33.360this verse Galatians 3 28 to justify it but Paul is not talking about this he's not saying that0.82
00:39:38.460all right you Greeks in Asia Minor you need to you need to get some more diversity you need to go
00:39:43.380you need to go elsewhere. Some of you are going to have to go to Persia. Some of you have to go to1.00
00:39:47.220India. You have to bring Indians here. He's not saying that with his verse at all. What is1.00
00:39:53.380his point that he's making? He's saying in Christ, in the kingdom of God, there's neither Jew nor0.96
00:39:58.420Greek. In Christ, in the church, there are not these distinctions. And this is true. This is
00:40:05.340wonderful or you think about this in in nigeria right now there are many of our christian brothers1.00
00:40:15.080and sisters and little children that are being attacked by muslims and murdered destroyed right0.83
00:40:22.680and i i have affinity for these people in a way that i don't when there are terrorist attacks0.89
00:40:26.800against in pakistan against muslims or iraq right but when christians are attacked right those are
00:40:32.880our brothers we are heirs just like they are right we have the same inheritance with them
00:40:37.940in christ and that is a beautiful and wonderful thing but that doesn't mean that every all eight
00:40:46.200billion people on planet earth have a right to come to america and vote in our elections and
00:40:51.080and you know collect our tax money and things like that that's insanity it's not what paul is
00:40:55.280arguing for he's not arguing for that at all right and secondly right you take this or you take that
00:41:01.760exegesis and you say oh there's no distinctions between peoples anymore right well you also you
00:41:08.360have other distinctions other than you know ethnic distinctions in that verse right what are the other
00:41:13.680distinctions you have a distinction between male and female right so if you if you take the same
00:41:20.460exegetical strategy as you look at jews and greeks and you universalize it to everything
00:41:25.280not just within the kingdom of god but to everything then what does that mean right it0.97
00:41:30.780means that feminism is fine, right? It means, right, your pastor referenced it earlier. I'm sure you0.98
00:41:37.080all saw it. The spectacle yesterday, I mean, just the travesty of it, especially the very end of the
00:41:44.420video as the president is getting into the SUV, right? I mean, did you just see the women0.99
00:41:50.180secret service agents, right? I mean, they're running around like chickens with their head1.00
00:41:55.040cut off. They're playing with their sunglasses. They're not serious defenders of the president.
00:42:00.780right it's maybe it's purposeful i don't know right why they do that it's insanity to think
00:42:08.060that this job where your job is to take a bullet for another man would be given to a person that
00:42:13.980god did not design to be a warrior that's nuts but if you take the mainstream evangelical approach
00:42:22.200to galatians 3 28 well there's neither male nor female why do you have a problem with that you0.95
00:42:27.480hate women, Andrew? No, actually, I love women. I don't want them to take bullets for people. I
00:42:31.820don't want them going to war because I love women. I love my wife and my daughters, right? I don't
00:42:37.140want that. That's insane. That's nuts. But you take that same verse. Well, there's no, like,
00:42:42.520grace has destroyed nature. So there's no longer Jew or Greek anywhere, anywhere at all. Totally0.99
00:42:48.960universalized. Well, then there's no longer male nor female, which means, right, Bruce Jenner can
00:42:54.840become Caitlyn Jenner and Galatians 3.28 says it's okay, right? When you do, when you, when you
00:42:59.940practice that, when you take that strategy and you take it away from the context of being about the0.98
00:43:05.320church of Jesus Christ and about the kingdom of God, then I guess transgenderism is fine if you0.89
00:43:12.180do that, right? Of course it's not, right? We, we, it's, it's, it gives us a sense of revulsion1.00
00:43:18.920to think that that could be the case that isn't at all that isn't true whatsoever so these
00:43:28.400these two major errors right i think i think you hopefully you'll understand the points that i'm
00:43:35.040making right what what is it i mean both of these things the idea that grace restores nature doesn't
00:43:42.400destroy it right grace restores nature that you can have right what happens when the gospel goes
00:43:48.640different nations that are distinct. They might not like each other, right? The Germans and the
00:43:54.540French and the French and the English historically have not gotten along very well. But what happens
00:44:00.780as the leaven of the gospel makes its way through these particular nations where they don't get
00:44:05.140along with each other over centuries, what happens? You have peace because this nation and that nation
00:44:13.480and that nation, right? They share Christ together. They recognize you are my brother in Christ. We
00:44:19.540are heirs of the kingdom of God. And so I don't want to fight you, right? I don't, I don't want
00:44:24.460to have war with you at all, right? That's what it, that's what it brings. That's what it brings
00:44:31.040to us. So, and it's a recognition of Christian tradition, right? Nobody, 100 years ago, right?
00:44:39.220No one would read Galatians 3.28 and think, well, I guess this means there's no longer any ethnicities.
00:44:46.300There's not people from different countries or different races or anything like that.
00:44:49.320We can just say goodbye to those things, right?
00:44:52.160No, what it means is this is the mechanism that you have peace between the different people, right?
00:44:58.140This is the mechanism where you have peace between the differences, right?
00:45:01.160You also have, right, Revelation 7, right, where it says, right, up in heaven, at the end, there are many peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations.
00:45:10.280They say, right, actually at the conference yesterday, Stephen Wolf referenced this verse.
00:45:14.440They say, all right, your church needs to look like this, right?
00:45:17.140Even if you live in a 98% white town, well, you need to have more diversity because that's what heaven looks like.0.96
00:45:22.640Your particular church, you're being very bad and non-Christian, right?0.93
00:45:26.420You don't look like Revelation 7, 9.0.98
00:45:27.900um and that of course is insanity nobody thought that way a hundred years ago or 500 years ago
00:45:35.560right the traditions that we have um are are good and solid and sturdy and it doesn't mean that we
00:45:42.200were bad though they were our great great grandfathers were bad people right oh they're
00:45:46.020evil racist people because they didn't read galatians 328 the same way that david french does
00:45:51.180no of course not of course not so the main the main point that i'm trying to bring to you today
00:45:58.920is that tradition or the traditions of our fathers they're good they're good to reach back
00:46:06.660to the traditions of reformed protestant christianity to read the things they thought to
00:46:14.700to re-encounter the world that they lived in is good and healthy for us because the world we
00:46:21.060live in today is insane, and it actually affects the church and how we read the Bible. That's why
00:46:26.920you have so many churches that say, oh, women pastors are fine, because that was just a cultural
00:46:30.300thing back when Paul was, you know, writing, and we're so progressive, and we're way better than
00:46:36.380them now. I mean, don't you know they had slaves? So they're bad people. We were doing things the
00:46:42.420right way right our world is messed up by things like like that our world is is in rough shapes
00:46:50.720going back to these traditions is good and in fact um i think right the phenomenon and maybe
00:46:58.960many of you are troubled by that i'm kind of troubled by this or more than kind of
00:47:02.740is there this phenomenon of many young evangelical christian people you know my age and younger
00:47:09.240you know 20s 30s uh that grow up in evangelical churches right what what's the thing that happens
00:47:15.500especially if they move more right-wing politically right what do they do right they
00:47:20.780they they go roman catholic or eastern orthodox many of you probably have friends that have
00:47:26.980have done just that right what what are the what are the reasons why that they do this
00:47:31.760right one of the main reasons is like well i want something grounded in tradition i want something
00:47:38.800grounded in tradition maybe there's aesthetic reasons and things like that as well but i want
00:47:44.120something grounded in tradition because what did they grow up going to right they grew up going to
00:47:48.860either a big giant mega church evangelical thing where it's a where it's a ted talk and uh rock
00:47:54.880concert and it's just totally vapid or there's nothing there at all or the other alternative
00:48:00.600was going to the the really heavy doctrinal bible teaching church which actually was just we're
00:48:07.660going to talk about blood moons and red heifers and black helicopters and things like that every
00:48:12.200single week um that's all they do right neither of those things are grounded in in the tradition of
00:48:20.540protestantism whatsoever neither of those things so that's why they flee that's why they go but what
00:48:27.540what are we doing here what are we in my church what are we doing what are you doing in your
00:48:31.760church in many churches like ours right you i think it's well known because of your pastor's
00:48:38.480youtube channel that you guys are a 1689 church is that correct uh 1689 church right we're a 1689
00:48:44.040church right that's beautiful that's wonderful that is something that's 1689 that was a long
00:48:49.300time ago and right that means these are sturdy traditions that have been tested by hundreds of
00:48:56.660years and they have held up right what do you have in the big box evangelical mega churches you have
00:49:02.460you have traditions that are like five weeks old and they're going to chase the next trend those
00:49:06.300are your traditions right whatever is trendy last week right young people especially now when they
00:49:12.060see how bad things are they don't want that right they don't want they want something that is deep
00:49:17.060that is grounded in truth and in tradition so that's why they leave and go elsewhere and so
00:49:24.060what are we doing when we when we look at verses this way that in the traditional way right in the
00:49:28.620traditional way we are saying our great great great grandfathers the things that they believed
00:49:35.640you know they were actually right right we are honoring them by saying you know what you were
00:49:42.240correct you were correct about what you believed and what we are doing now the generation our
00:49:49.480generation the generations that precede us we rebelled against what you believed we thought
00:49:53.440we do better and we were wrong right that's what we're returning to tradition recovering tradition
00:49:58.980is and of course especially with an evangelicalism we have this antipathy toward tradition we think0.98
00:50:06.220tradition that's bad right that's that oh the Roman Catholics they do they have tradition1.00
00:50:11.300and that's bad they're just there they turn their brains off they don't read the Bible and they just1.00
00:50:15.160fall under it well I mean the caricature is kind of true I mean I know Catholics are gonna be angry1.00
00:50:20.080with me saying that but it's kind of true it's like well yeah we have the catechism we don't1.00
00:50:24.680need to read the bible why are you reading i need a priest to read that thing you're not qualified
00:50:28.200right they do do that often when you argue with them right but what do we do right what do we do
00:50:34.340we don't say oh i'm a robot just bound by tradition i'm not going to read the scriptures
00:50:38.880for myself no we're guided by the tradition we're guided by the tradition um the analogy i would use
00:50:45.100right now I'm reframing out the basement of my house. I'm reframing out the basement of my house
00:50:53.380and if all I had right if I was a total novice I've never picked up a hammer in my entire life
00:51:02.500right if all I had was just a pile of two by fours and studs and nails and it's like all right I'm
00:51:10.720going to go try to frame this thing up, make it look nice, right? I'd never been taught how to do
00:51:17.560construction. There was no YouTube videos available to watch. I didn't have anyone to teach me.
00:51:22.940And I just tried to throw that thing together. It would look like modern art, right? It would not
00:51:28.360look good. It wouldn't be straight and plumb and level, right? It would be like, is that a dog or
00:51:34.080a person? I don't really know, right? It would be a mess. It would look like a lot of the buildings
00:51:39.060in Austin, and it would be bad. It would be terrible, but what do I have, right? I'm guided
00:51:48.760by what? By tradition, right? By tradition. My dad taught me, all right, you want to keep this
00:51:56.860level, son, and you want these boards to be square and straight. Well, he didn't reinvent how to build
00:52:02.720houses on his own spontaneously one day, right? Somebody taught him, and somebody taught that guy.