Introduction
In 1975 the IRA prisoners at Long Kesh jail in Northern Ireland burnt it down (don’t get any ideas!). Tom Kelly was one of those prisoners as was James Tate but he was on the opposite side, a UVF commander. James helped to found the UVF in Belfast. He was arrested one Easter Sunday in possession of firearms and received a 6 year sentence. In that time he took charge of 80 men. Tom Kelly joined the IRA as a teenager. He was imprisoned for the same offence and was sentenced to 7 years. He joined all sort of protests from hunger strikes, where some of his friends died, to dirty protests.
While in prison both men came to the conclusion that violence would solve nothing. James left the UVF despite being threatened and found work in a Belfast mission. He became impressed with the practical Christian love he saw there and what finally brought him to faith was hearing the former New York Gangster Nicky Cruz say that not only would God forgive his sins, but also forget them. He desperately wanted that because he felt awfully guilty about what he had done.
On his release Tom Kelly eventually became disillusioned and wanted out. His wife took him to a Christian meeting and he heard God say to him “Tom, let me have your heart.” He said “If it’s you God, you can have it because I hate it”. He too gave his life to Jesus.
The two men met again as Christians and offered each other forgiveness and healing. They now speak together across their divided communities bringing people to see their need of God. God had a plan for both their lives. A plan which involved a promise made to both of them, where both men held their lives up against God’s perfection and found themselves wanting and where both became Children of God, found freedom and equality and became heirs to the promises of God.
God’s Master Plan
We hear the phrase “God has a plan for your life”. I have said it many times. But do you understand what it means? Do you know what God’s plan is for your life and where you are up to in that plan? In the reading today Paul lays out God’s plan over the 2,000 years which separated Abraham, Moses and Jesus and shows us how that plan is for all who come to Christ, including Tom Kelly and James Tate.
Step One: The Promise is Made (Verses 15-18)
God has made a promise to Abraham that although he is 100 and has no children he will have descendants who outnumber the stars in the heavens. Paul tells us in verse 16 how one of those offspring will be Jesus and through Jesus all the people of the earth will be blessed. He told us in verse 14 what that blessing is. Through putting our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus we receive the promise of the Holy Spirit and new life. What a blessing that is! Amen?
God will not ever change his mind on this. What he promises will happen. Who here has written a will? (Just out of interest, how much am I getting?) Once a will has been made no one else can change it or cancel it. A will is a definite promise to pass on to others that which they have not earned and therefore do not deserve. But out of grace and generosity they will receive their inheritance for free. God’s promise to us is exactly the same. He will not change his mind and no one can cancel it. We receive the free gift that God has promised and all we have to do is believe it and accept it.
Sometimes some people will challenge a will. “He didn’t deserve that” someone will shout. “She’s not the right sort of person to have that” someone else will add. “They got it too easily”. That’s what those who oppose Christianity say. “It’s too easy, you have to work for it, say so many prayers, not eat that and never believe you are going to heaven”. These people are challenging a promise which God promised never to change or cancel. They challenge it on the basis that while having faith in God is good, didn’t God send us rules to keep too?”
Paul says in verse 17 that the Law which came after the people of Israel ended up in captivity in Egypt and way after Abraham does not replace the promise given to Abraham. On the contrary, the Law is there to help the promise be fulfilled.
Now listen carefully, very carefully. The faith of Abraham and the law of Moses are two very different things. As I said last week the promise made to Abraham is about trusting God, the law is about trying to please God and believing that will save you.
Here are the major differences: In the trusting God says “I will …. I will …. I will ….” In the Law God says “You shall …… you shall not”. Trusting is a religion based on God’s action in our lives – his plan, his grace, his initiatives. Trying is a religion of man based on his own effort – his duty, his works, his responsibility. Trusting has to be believed in order to work whereas the law has to be fully obeyed to work and man can never do that. Trusting leads us to Abraham and his promise through Jesus, trying brings us to the Moses and the curse of the law.
So if God’s plan for our lives is the promise that faith works, why did God bring the law in at all? How does that fit into the plan?
Step Two: The Law is Introduced (Verses 19-24)
Let’s get this right, introducing the law is not plan B because plan A failed, this is God’s continuing plan to bring us back to himself. To understand that we have to understand the place of the law.
Paul asks “What then is the point of the Law?” let me ask you a question. On its own is the law a good thing? Yes! Why? It reflects who God is. It is perfect and holy. It gives us something to aim for and without sin we would achieve it and we would keep it. But it wasn’t introduced where there were sinless people. It was needed because there was sin. Why? So that we could see how perfect God’s standards are and realise how far short of them we fall. In trying to keep them we would also realise we can’t do it and in our despair reach out to God as the only one who can make us right again.
Paul describes how the law achieves this in two ways. It is a prison (v 22). The law entices us to sin as we saw last week with the “No fishing” sign. It traps us by releasing our worst desires and then it chokes us in poison and beats us down as we think less and less of ourselves. That’s what imprisonment in its pure form does. The law makes us worse, it is not able to cure us. But there is another side to the same coin. The law is also described by Paul as “put in charge of us”. The Greek word used here actually means to babysit. Like a good babysitter its job is to help the toddler along the road to meet Christ (v 24).
So as Paul says in verse 21 “Is the Law opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not!” The first step of God’s plan is to give us the promise of being right with him through faith in Jesus. Step two, the law is introduced which makes us feel bad, but the law also drags us like kicking and screaming toddlers into the arms of a loving and forgiving Father.
And if you resist this still thinking you can make yourself right with God through your own efforts not faith Paul proves that faith is superior to effort. Our problem is that just about everyone today believes you have to work hard to please God – the Jews, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist, even a large part of the church. But Paul proves to all of them that it does not compute. The crux of the matter is in verse 19.
Having faith was not replaced by keeping rules because keeping rules is inferior. And it’s inferior for 4 reasons:
1. You cannot be made right with God through keeping rules. If you could God would never have used faith.
2. The idea of having faith was given directly to Abraham by God and is therefore the final word on the subject.
3. In contrast, rule keeping – the law – came to people third hand – God to angels to Moses. This, Paul argues, makes the law inferior to faith because of the way it was delivered. It is not the final word on the subject, just additional information.
4. This has major consequences: As Jesus is God, what we received from him first hand is superior to anything delivered to a person by an angel who then passes it onto the people. Jesus is the final word. When God deals directly with human beings as he did through Jesus and as he did with the writers of the Bible that is what we listen to.
Step Three: The Promise is Fulfilled (Verses 25-29)
God has given the promise and he has given the law to work together. Now Paul shows us how God’s plan is completed.
Verse 25 – the babysitter does its work and departs and our real parent takes charge of us and we become children of God. That is what you are. Reunited with your real dad. No longer a toddler, a new creation. In Rome a youth laid aside his robe of childhood and put on a new toga. This represented becoming a citizen with the full rights and responsibilities of the empire. Paul uses this picture to say that those who rely on faith are spiritually grown up with the new rights and responsibilities of the Kingdom of God. The old clothes of being a tryer are gone and are replaced with a new robe of righteousness – of beginning to live like Christ.
Paul says that one of the signs of this Christ-like behaviour is the breaking down of barriers (v 28). Jews used to pray “Thank you Lord that I am not a gentile, a woman or a slave”. To the new Christian faith in Christ enables you to transcend all differences – religion, status, gender, culture or nationality. All irrelevant.
Isn’t it interesting then how we generally mix in groups which often represent status, culture, nationality and differing beliefs. It’s worth thinking about if we are open enough to Paul’s vision of what marks people out as God’s children. With the rights we receive as children of God come the challenges and responsibilities of breaking down all barriers.
Conclusion
Over 2,000 years, from Abraham to Jesus, Paul shows that God had a plan which never changed. He showed that faith is the only way, but Law has a role to play in achieving the promise and without it we would not return to God. But when we do there is freedom, maturity, equality and love.
This is God’s master plan. The promise was for the whole world not just a few. If you have not taken it yet, the promise is for you. Christians who have trusted in Jesus are the true spiritual descendants of Abraham and inheritors of the promise of God active in their lives. Everyone, like James Tate and John Kelly, must grasp the real role of the law and let it condemn them with guilt and drag them into the arms of their waiting Father. Too many of us fail to make the journey with the babysitter and remain sitting there feeling condemned. Let the law do its job in pointing you to Christ and then go to him, put your trust in him and receive life in all its fullness.
