This morning if you will turn with me in your Bibles to Galatians chapter 3. We're going to be looking at verses 21 to 25 specifically, but I'm going to read to you from verse 19 of chapter 3 of the book of Galatians. Last Sunday I preached to you a sermon from Matthew chapter 5 verse 17 that Christ didn't come to destroy the law and the prophets but to fulfill And I wanted to build off of what I said to you last Sunday and show you this morning of other things regarding the law to set the stage for the verses that will follow in Matthew chapter 5 there verses 18 and 19 where he talks about heaven and earth not passing away until every jot and tittle is fulfilled in the law, and then going on to talk about the specifics of the law of God. This sermon this morning, I want to talk about how the law was our tutor or our schoolmaster to lead us to Christ. Let's bow together for prayer. Oh, our Father, how we give you thanks for the way that you use your word so mightily in the lives of your people. we pray for myself that you'll give me the strength and wisdom and of your spirit to set it forth in such a way that your people are drawn to consider the truth of it and to live in accordance with it keeping your commandments and pleasing you in every respect help us by coming to us now oh lord give us a sense of your presence work in their hearts, Lord, work in all the people's hearts here, everyone listening, that you would give them ears to hear and eyes to see and a heart to take in these truths so as to communicate them to others when they know them themselves. We do pray for the growth of each one here in this church today through this message. In your precious name, Lord Jesus, amen. Galatians chapter 3 and verse 19, it says here, what purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made. And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator does not mediate for one only, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not, for if there had been a law given, which could have given life, truly righteousness would have been by the law. But the scripture is confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith. which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ. that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. Is the law against the promises of God? That's a very good question because the Apostle Paul has shown all along in this book of Galatians that we as sinners cannot be saved by attempting to keep the works of the law. He says that we can be saved from our sins only by faith in the promise of God, that promise being completely fulfilled in and through and by the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, the obvious conclusion that would seem to follow is that the law is intrinsically against the promises of God. But is this so? Well, Paul says, certainly not. And the New American Standard Translation says, may it never be. And the King James Version says, God forbid. And so at this time I want to open up for you the relationship between the law and the promises so that you will see that God uses both the law and his promises for very specific reasons. And three specific reasons I will give to you now. First of all, the law cannot give spiritual life. But the promises are given to show us the importance of faith in Jesus Christ. Verse 21, is the law then against the promises of God? Certainly not. For if there had been a law given which could have given life, then truly righteousness would have been by the law. So we can plainly see here the weakness of the law. It cannot give life. It cannot give life to sinful, people so that they would have the strength to keep the law on their own and thus please God in that way. The commandments of God are those statements that we find in the Bible which are God's righteous expectations of how we should think and what we should do in every situation of our lives. He expects you and I to be holy He expects us to live to him and not ultimately to ourselves. You shall have no other gods before me, he says in the first of the Ten Commandments. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself, he says is the summary of the Ten Commandments. And yet we find the Apostle Paul saying here that the law does not have any life. in itself to give to us, to help us to keep God's commandments perfectly and from right motives. He's saying that if there had been a law given that could have given us life so that we could keep the commandments of God perfectly, then truly our being able to obtain righteousness by the works of the law would have been ours to be able to perform. We could then justify ourselves in the sight of the holy God. We could prove to him, in other words, that we're acceptable and that we are perfect in the things that we do and the things that we say, but we need to understand that the law of the Ten Commandments that was given on Mount Sinai is a reiteration, a giving again on a broader national scale of the covenant of works that God gave Adam at the beginning of the world in the Garden of Eden. It was God saying over again at Mount Sinai to his people as a nation when he had delivered them from Egyptian bondage, and when he was bringing them into the promised land, remember my promises to the fathers, and keep my commandments, and do what I command you, and you will be blessed. And if you don't do it, then you will be cursed. And he specifically lists the blessings and the curses in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 in verses 6 to 10 of Deuteronomy 28. He says, blessed shall you be when you come in and blessed shall you be When you go out and the Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face, and they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways. And the Lord will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and he will bless you in the land which the Lord your God is giving to you. And in verse one of chapter 28, he says, it shall come to pass if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all his commandments, which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. But you look over in verse 45 of chapter 28, that same chapter, verse 45, and he says, moreover, all these curses shall come upon you if you do not keep my law. They will pursue and these curses will overtake you until you are destroyed because you did not obey the voice. There it is again. of the Lord your God to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded you and they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder and on your descendants forever because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything. Now that is very interesting wording, is it not? In other words, if they didn't serve God with joy and gladness of heart for the abundance of everything that they had been given, they would be under His curse. So part of what God expected of them in terms of their trusting in Him, and by the way, He did expect them to trust in Him when they obeyed Him, but they mistook their the commandments that they were given to be that which they would perform not by trusting in him so much as just in their own strength and their own wisdom and their own ability by their own striving to do and keep God's commandments on their own, that they would try to do this, which of course they utterly failed in doing. And we read in Galatians chapter 3 verse 19 that the law was added because of transgressions, that is because of sins. that Israel would commit, but also all the sins that came before them. The sins that destroyed the world. And the flood, when all those people perished. Why did they perish? They perished because of transgressions against the Lord. Or the sins that came after that, between the flood and the time of Mount Sinai. Well, there were sins that were committed there. And all of those sins were something that God deals with and dealt with justly in that day. So he gave his holy law because of transgressions, it says in Galatians 3.19. And Israel, his people, didn't keep his law. And so all of these curses that you find here in Deuteronomy 28 came upon them. And if you will read them you see specifically some of those curses related to 70 AD when God came against them for the rejection of Christ and utterly overthrew their nation and destroyed them through Titus and the Roman armies in 70 AD. So we need to understand here that God did not give his law to the Jews or to any man for that matter to say to them that they could be justified by keeping it that they could be declared righteous by God by keeping it. Rather, he gave it to them to show them that they needed God's grace. to be able to keep the least of His commandments. And God knew that they would not be able to keep His commandments without Christ's life and their life and without a new heart being given to them based upon a new covenant of grace that He would give to them through our Lord Jesus Christ. He knew that people would not be able to keep His holy law. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 29. Oh that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep my commandments that it might be well with them and with their children forever. Now God said that right after he gave the law on Mount Sinai. in Deuteronomy 5 verses 1 to 22. But they should have known that they couldn't come to know God and please Him except by faith in the promise of Christ. For that's what's specifically mentioned, by the way, in Deuteronomy chapter 18 and verse 15. Let me read that for you. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me. from your midst, from your brethren, him you shall hear, this is Moses speaking, a prophet like Moses, but him you shall hear according to all you desire to the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, let me not hear the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire any longer, lest I die. And the Lord said to me, What they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you, Moses, from among their brethren, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. That, of course, refers to our Lord Jesus Christ. And they were being instructed to look forward. By faith. to his coming and to believe in him and they should have remembered that Adam was not able to keep the covenant of works in the beginning the law of his first creation like I spoke to you about last Sunday and so over and over again in the nation of Israel's history we see people to whom the law was given who were not able to do and keep the commandments of God on their own in any way near to being perfect. I want you to turn with me over to Hosea chapter 6 and verse 4. Hosea chapter 6, and I'm going to look at a number of verses here in Hosea 6, and not necessarily in order. I'm going to start in verse 4. "'What shall I do to you, O Judah? "'What shall I do to you? "'For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, "'and like the early dew it goes away. "'Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, "'and I have slain them by the words of my mouth, "'and your judgments are like light that goes forth. "'For I desire mercy. and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings but Like men, or like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. There they dealt treacherously with me." So these words, but like men, can very legitimately be translated, but like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant. And so if the people could have kept the law of God perfectly, they would have lived spiritually. But most certainly they could not keep it at all as fallen men who were descended from Adam. They kept pursuing the law as though they had the strength in themselves to do it and to keep it. So when the law was first given, the children of Israel broke it before Moses got down from the mountain. to be able to hand them the Ten Commandments the first time. God had written on those two tablets of stone with His own finger the Ten Commandments. And here in these verses we find that they were still being religious, they were offering sacrifices, but they were not keeping the moral duties of the Ten Commandments. What was God looking for anyway? Well, God was looking for them to show mercy. As it says here, I desire mercy. rather than sacrifice. In other words, instead of just simply offering the sacrifices for your sins, I want this to become something that is from your heart, that you would show mercy to people around you. And this is what he was looking for them to do. In fact, you see this also in Micah chapter six and verse eight. It says there, he has shown you, O man, What is good? And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God? He wanted them to show mercy to their neighbors in their truly caring for their spiritual and physical needs. Now, we need to ask ourselves whether we really think that way. Because that's what God requires of us. He's requiring of us to show mercy. Yes, He wants us to do justly, that is to love to do what is righteous according to God's commandments. But the person who shows mercy and shows love to their neighbor has fulfilled the law, it says in Romans 13. Well, we need to understand that we can't do this, can we? Apart from the Lord's help to us. They couldn't do it according to their own strength, their own righteousness, their own self-righteousness. They would first of all have to trust in the promises of God for this. And the same is true for us. We have to trust in the promises of God concerning Christ, first of all. For without that, we can't keep the commandments of God. If you love me, keep my commandments. Jesus says, but how do you come to love him? Except by believing in him. And you believe in him when you see what he has done for you. At the cross, we love because he first loved us. So I'm saying that if they would believe the promise of Christ who is coming, then they would be justified. Do you see it? That's what it meant for them back then. They didn't know the name of Jesus. They didn't know how to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. They'd been promised a prophet who they were supposed to trust and believe in and obey. And the person who didn't obey him, they'd be cut off from the people. God was saying to them, I want you to see I'm going to send my Messiah. I'm going to send the Savior. I'm going to send the one who works in your heart. And then you'll be able to have this heart that will keep my commandments. When he did that, even back then, they were still given the Holy Spirit. Those who trusted in him, Abraham was, Now they didn't understand all the workings of the Spirit like we do. Since the day of Pentecost, having been given so much, the Spirit was given then. But it wasn't as though they didn't have the Holy Spirit in those days past or that Abraham didn't have the promise of the Spirit by faith. He most certainly did. And the law came 430 years after the promise given to Abraham. that Abraham had the Holy Spirit in his heart and Abraham was justified by faith in the Christ who would come. And we need to see these good truths. We need to understand that God would set apart certain of the Jews by his working in them by the Holy Spirit so that they would be holy. So they would understand and know the Lord, not in a legalistic way, just because they lived under the old covenant or in old covenant times. People were not saved in a legalistic way, they were saved by looking forward to Christ. And they exercise faith in the promise. You see, spiritual life could only come to them through their believing in the promise. It's when you believe in the promise that you find life in Jesus' name. Not by trying to be righteous by yourself or trying to keep the commandments in your own strength. Look at Hosea 6 verses 1 to 3, that's backing up from where I just read to you. Come and let us return to the Lord, for He is torn, but He will heal us. He is stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us, and on the third day He will raise us up that we may live in his sight, so let us know and let us pursue or press on to the knowledge of the Lord, or to know the Lord is going forth, is established as the morning or as the dawn. He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain on the earth. So the law was given specifically to the nation of Israel. It was given on Mount Sinai to the ethnic people, of Israel. In verse 19 of the verses that we're studying in Galatians, Paul says that the law was added because of transgressions until the seed should come to whom the promise was made. And it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator, that is by Moses, But the children of Israel and all the people who would come to know God, they needed a greater mediator than Moses, didn't they? Moses could tell them of their duty to God, but only Christ could pay the penalty for their sins and heal them of the disease of sin. It's only God who can take away our sins and declare us righteous through Jesus Christ our Lord. It's only God who can heal our hearts and grant us the grace of repentance to return to him through the sufferings of Jesus Christ our Lord. That's why Christ had to die for us. Do you see that? That's why he had to lay down his life and purchase us with His precious blood. It's shown forth in the wording of the verses that I just read to you in Hosea chapter 6. God had torn them. He had hewn them with the prophets He says there, he had slain their self-righteousness. He had brought them to conviction of sin by preaching the preaching of the law through the prophets, but then he would also heal them. It says here, and he would do so on the basis of Christ's death and burial and resurrection. And so it's faith in God's promise that heals the sin-sick soul. That's why Christ lay in the tomb on Friday and Saturday nights after he was crucified. He had fulfilled the law and He suffered for our sins. And on the third day He arose, and thus all who believe in Him, whether they are Old Testament or New Testament believers, they could find spiritual life, eternal and everlasting life, by faith in Him. In the context of these verses, we have to come to know God before we can really serve Him. We can't serve God. without really knowing God. Let us know. Let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is like the dawn, and he shall come to us by the light. So we need to pray to be sanctified by the word of truth. The word of truth, the Bible. We need to be made holy. by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ who will set us aside to worship God, to serve God, to trust in him as our mediator so that we can learn to do and keep the commandments of God all by his grace. we learn how to do those things, not from our own self-righteousness. Second, we need to see that one of the law's main purposes was to be a tutor to lead us to Christ. Verse 22 of chapter three, but the scripture is confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. But before faith came, We were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith, which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. Now this truth is really quite amazing. In fact, if you do a study in the concordance of how many times faith is listed in the Old Testament, you will find two references to faith. I'll let you look it up later on. It seems hard to believe, doesn't it? But that's how important the verses that we're studying here are and how intricately faith is linked to Christ himself and the coming of Christ into the world to fulfill the law on our behalf. You see, this is how the Lord intended the law to function as a pedagogue to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith in Him. A pedagogue is one who teaches, or a child instructor, but there are some things that he may not be able to teach, this pedagogue, and when that's the case, then he takes the child by the hand, and he brings him to the one who can. teach the child what they need to learn. Now it's true that the law brings to us conviction of sins, but it cannot bring to us life. As I said to you, the whole scripture we are told here has confined all men under sin, so that the promise by faith might be given to those who believe." So salvation is by none of our works, it's all of Christ's finished work, but the law does a good work in this regard. This is what I'm trying to show you. According to God's holy purpose, it acts as a pedagogue, as a teacher, who brings us to Christ. Now, many of us have often thought upon this verse as it is rendered in the King James translation, the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It's a good translation. But the words to bring us are not in the original. So it should read, the law is our schoolmaster unto Christ. I think what B.H. Carroll says about this is very helpful. He says, the Greek word is a compound word, pais, a child, and agagos, a conductor. Agagos is the verb, again, to lead or conduct. To complete the analogy, he says, we only need to refer to the heathen custom of entrusting the care of a child in the years before he became an adult to a slave. The slave was not necessarily the teacher in the modern sense of pedagogue, but he would lead the child to the school where the real teacher would instruct him. So the law, says Carol, a slave, leads to Christ, the great teacher. In this sense, the law evidently was not intended, he says, to annul the previous covenant of grace, but was added to it in a subsidiary or helpful sense. End of quote. And so in verse 23, we see the words, before faith came, we were kept under guard or garrisoned by the law, kept for the faith, which would afterward be revealed. And in explaining this first phrase, before faith came, we only need to think of Christ as the object of our faith. It's very simple, really. He's the one who was revealed in the fullness of time. That is, in God's good time He was revealed. And it could read this way, before Christ, the object of faith came, we were kept garrisoned by the law. And so what verse 23 is saying is that this is what the law's purpose was. It could not give life. It could only condemn those under it before Christ came. And this is also true in the present New Testament time, before we believe in the promise and His mighty grace comes to us personally, we are kept in custody, as it were, garrisoned under the law, because we cannot please God until we believe in Jesus Christ, the one who fulfilled the law, and thus is the greater teacher, the one who will instruct us by his good Holy Spirit. The law's only consolation to the Jews was that in many types and shadows it pointed forward to Christ. that His coming was to be looked forward to as the fulfillment of all of God's righteous requirements according to the law. Only faith in the promise of Christ's coming to fulfill the law on their behalf would set the Hebrew people free and justify them in the sight of God. But they were justified, as I've been trying to tell you, in the same way that we are now. by faith in Christ. And the law keeps us as its prisoner, as it were. And Christ comes to free us from the confinement of the law. And so the Jews were thus kept in this confinement, as it were, before the coming of Christ, until the object of their faith came. and fulfilled God's holy law. And we can further say, concerning all unbelievers in New Testament times, that when they see the righteous requirements of the law, the righteous requirements of God and the moral law of the Ten Commandments, they are also kept in this confinement until they are personally freed by Christ. The law has unbelieving people in sort of a bondage of spirit. It says in Romans chapter eight, until we're set free by the Lord Jesus Christ. So the more that you look into the law and try to keep it, apart from the gracious help of the Holy Spirit, the more that you'll be brought into a sort of confinement It's sort of a bondage, sort of a being garrisoned, if you will, by the law because it shows you your sins. It points them out to you. But it cannot bring you life. It shows you sins of omission and sins of commission. Those things that you have not done and those things that you have done that were offensive to God. It shows you them both. And so you feel this conviction of sin, this bondage, but you don't know how to free yourself, so you try harder and harder by your own strength, by your own wisdom, by your own attempts at keeping the commandments, but it only becomes more and more difficult and frustrating. And that's because the law was designed that way, not to give you life, but to show you the righteous requirements of God's law and that only Jesus could fulfill those requirements in himself and bring you to God so that then you could begin fulfilling. the righteous requirement of the law in the way that you live, think the things that you say and do. Faith looks outside of yourself to Christ. And then third and finally, once faith in the promise of Christ had come, we're no longer under a tutor, for we are sons of God. Now this ought to be very encouraging. to everyone who has tried so hard to keep the law of God and failed, which will invariably happen, by the way. The law is not against the promises of God. Although it cannot give us life, although it can only keep us in confinement, as I've said, until Christ comes to our heart, the law does willingly release us unto Christ. seeing the Lord Jesus Christ has perfectly fulfilled all of God's righteous requirements. The law releases you to Christ when you believe in him. You are in-lawed to Christ, or under law to Christ. In other words, you still love the law, and you still go about to keep the commandments of God, but you do so in relation to Christ himself having fulfilled them. on your behalf and he's teaching you by his Spirit to do and to keep them from this different principle, not of self-righteousness, but from the principle of grace, working in your heart that seed of righteousness and the help of the Holy Spirit coming to you moment by moment and day by day. You see, I'm saying this ought to be a great encouragement to you that the law does willingly release you to Christ so that you are His. You are no longer married to the law. If you have believed in Jesus Christ, Romans 7 verse 4, therefore, my brethren, you have also become dead to the law through the body of Jesus Christ, that you might be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God, that is spiritual fruit, in good works." Oh, this is so good. What a great release this is. You are no longer married to the law as you once were before you came to faith in Christ. Listen to Romans 8.3, for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, that is, your flesh. God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin he condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, that is, in the strength of what I think I can do on my own apart from Christ by my own righteousness? Trying hard to please God, trying hard to fulfill the law on my own, trying my hardest to keep His commandments but failing, but according to the Spirit. Oh, there's all the difference in the world between the flesh and the Spirit. What a blessed thing it is that through Christ's Spirit that we've been given life, where the law could not. Well, let's pray together. Father, we thank you for this passage that we've been studying. We praise you, O Lord, for having fulfilled the law on our behalf, fulfilling it perfectly. And as we're going to see in coming studies, every jot and tittle of it, was fulfilled in you, but it shall not pass away until the end of the world. That is, until it's all fulfilled in regard to everything that your people will do in relation to it, by your grace, by your righteousness, by your strength, by your power. and because of your love for us. Therefore, we love you who first loved us, and we pray that we would be those who understand the law and the promises and the relationship between the two. Thank you for this study. We pray that it will avail much to help us in our obedience to you in coming days. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's close by singing hymn number 447. Blessed are the undefiled in heart, whose ways are right and pure, something we pray every day for. 447. Let's stand and sing this good hymn together. Blessed are the undefiled in heart, whose ways are right and clean. Oh, never from the law depart, but fly from every sin. Keep thy word, and practice thy commands. With their whole heart they seek the Lord, and serve thee with their hands. Great is their peace, who love thy law. How firm their souls abide. Can a bold temptation draw their steady feet aside? Then shall my heart have inward joy, And keep my face from shame, When all thy statutes I obey. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved. As for me, I will call upon God, and the Lord shall save me. And all of God's people said, Amen.