What Good is a Promise

Galatians 3:15-18

Sometimes we have lights go off in our mind. We suddenly make a connection, often in the study of History, which ties our lives to the lives of the past. I made that connection this week.

Here is how it worked… Galatia of the Bible is in Asia Minor, near the modern day region of Turkey. It like all the other lands of the Bible seem so distant from us and from our European past. It is almost as though we speak of a different world when we speak of “Bible Times.” At times we may as well be speaking of Atlantis.

BUT… Did you know that many of you were quite likely related to the very people to which Paul addressed this letter? Let me ask you this? Do any of you recognize or celebrate your Celtic heritage? What about your Pictish or Gaelic heritage? Let’s move through the centuries and think about some other names for these regions such as Scottish, Irish, Welch, Italian, French, German.

By 400 years before Christ much of Europe was settled and controlled by the Celtic peoples. One Celtic group you may recognize were the Gaul’s of modern day France. The Gaul’s settled much of France, Italy, and over into Thrace, Cappadocia, and other regions west of Mesopotamia through the 3^rd Century BC. The region in Asia Minor where they ultimately settled came to be known as Galatia. They flourished and over the years a governmental system was developed, business was good, the land was fertile, and they became a great people in the region. However by the end of the 2^nd Century the Roman Empire had overtaken them and by the time of Christ they were simply another province of Rome.

Today we read the letter that Paul wrote to the people of the northern region of Galatia, the ethnic Gaul’s. It was our European ancestors who received the Gospel of Jesus as preached by Paul on his missionary journey through Asia Minor with Barnabas.

Originally these people worshiped a group of gods, not unlike the Roman and Greek Pantheon. They were so devout that when Paul and Barnabas came to them and healed a man that had been crippled from birth; they thought they were Zeus and Hermes. Acts 14 tells of this story and we know that as a result of this and other incidents there were Gentile churches planted in and around this region. These pagans, these Gaul’s, these Celt’s heard the Good News and were converted.

They had given up their religion for the Gospel Paul preached but then, as is often the case, someone came along behind Paul preaching a different Gospel. These that came along after Paul introduced to them the Jewish customs, history, and law and told them that they could only be followers of Jesus if they believed in Christ and followed the Jewish Law. That is why Paul wrote to our ancestors, to teach them that the law does not offer salvation, but rather condemnation.

So, let’s talk about the law. Can the law be kept? Have you kept all the law? I think not. Do you know anyone who had kept the law? If you think so, read through Deuteronomy and Leviticus again and see if you followed all that is in it. The point is that it is impossible to follow all the laws that are recorded. Think about our own times…

Have you ever sped in a car?

Have you ever misunderstood a law or not known about a rule and broken it, on accident?

It has happened to all of us, physically and spiritually. Roman’s 3:23 tells us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

We have all failed. End of discussion. Or is it?

To hear some tell of the story of Salvation, God created we humans, we messed up in the Garden, God gave us the law and we broke it, so God had to do something else to help us out since we couldn’t kept the law. I think I may have even put it pretty close to that before myself.

But would it surprise you if I said that salvation in God was never associated with the law? Look back at our passage… it keeps talking about a promise and an inheritance if Abraham. Let’s look at those promises:

Gen. 12:3 “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Gen. 15:6 “and he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Because of his faith, Abraham was promised to be a great nation and that the salvation of the earth was to come from among his seeds, his offspring, his descendents; not from all of his descendents but from one seed, one offspring, one descendent, that is Christ.

The promise of salvation came long before the law. Abraham’s righteousness had nothing to do with the law, it had to do with his faith. You see, the promise of God both preceded and superseded the law.

We heard the passage from Romans 3:23 and I know I have quoted it so many times when talking about salvation, but I don’t know that I have ever sat down and read the whole passage. Even though we know better, we still seem to focus on the law, on our failures. But let’s look back to that passage and the verses that surround it, Romans 3:21-26.

You see, once again, it is not the law that saves us, it is faith, or as we read it in Ephesians as well as here in Romans, it is grace through faith in Jesus Christ that we find that we are made right before God.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that we should throw the law out, be they the OT laws, the NT laws, or the laws of our society. The laws are there to help us. They are there to guide us. They are a gift to help us be better people as we relate to God and to one another.

BUT… our salvation is not found in these laws, it is found in the promise that was first given to Abraham. It is found in the faith that we have in God, through Jesus Christ, that because of it we are reckoned as Righteous.

What good is a promise?

What good is the promise that Paul reminded our ancestors about some 2000 years ago?

What good is the promise that we are reminded of today?

The Good is that the promise is as available to you today as it was to your ancestors in Galatia 2000 years ago, and to your ancestors in Europe 1000 years ago, and to your ancestors here in the New World some 500 years ago.

It is the same promise that has been passed down from Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob and on through the years.

It is a promise that if you believe in God and place your faith in Jesus Christ, you will be saved.

And that’s when the real journey begins.

Salvation is not a destination, it is journey.

Will you join us on that journey today?