My Performance, My Partnership , and God’s Promises

I want to start with a question, and that is, did you know that God never looks at you wishing that you were somebody else? Sometimes we do that ourselves, don't we? think, I wish I was taller, I wish I was richer, I wish I was more talented. But God never looks at you that way, but God looks at you and He thinks, I'm so glad I made them the special way I made them because I have a very special plan for their life. I'm going to tell you a joke on camera this morning, and whenever we were first married, we talked to somebody, and evidently they had trouble in their hips. One leg was longer than the other, and they were telling us about how somebody prayed for them and their leg grew out, and now both of their legs were the same length. And you know what Ms. Tamber did? She looked at the person and she said, if you prayed for me, do you think both of my legs could grow out so I could be taller? But listen, God doesn't want us to think that way, right? But God wants us to know that we're a special person and that God has a very special plan for our life. In fact, he said this in 2 Corinthians 10, verse 12. He said, we're not to measure ourselves by ourselves and we're not to compare ourselves by one another. And he says, if you do that it's not wise. And the reason for that is we start putting ourselves down. We start belittling the things that maybe we don't have in life. And what God wants us to do is He wants us to discover the beautiful things He can do if we take our strengths and put them in God's hand. And through our strength, working with God's grace, God can take us places we could never go without God's help. And that's what our text today is going to to talk to us about. It's in Galatians chapter 3, verses 15 to 29. And it begins this way. I'm just going to read verse 16 because it kind of clearly communicates the topic we're going to study today. It says that the promises that God spoke to Abraham were also for Abraham's seed. Now, you may wonder, well, who is the seed of Abraham, that God made an incredible promise to bless? Well, Galatians 3, 29 is where our text is going to end today. And this is what it says. If you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's seed and you are heirs according to the promise. So when we read about the promise that God made Abraham, this text is all about the fact that God wants us to know that He didn't just promise Abraham the things that He promised and delivered on in Abraham's life, but God also wants us to know that it should mean something to us about how God wants to bless our life. And in chapter 3, the word promise or promises is used 10 or 11 times in just 29 verses, depending on which translation we're reading. And this is what God wants this chapter to accomplish in our heart. All of us know what it's like to experience disappointments, setbacks, to have negative words spoken over our lives. And if we're not careful, it's not long until we start settling And we think, this is about the best I can do, so I'm going to settle right here. And we're going to study two texts today. When I was preparing this text, I seldom do this, but I thought, you know, I can't teach Galatians chapter 3 without first teaching Romans chapter 4, because Romans chapter 4 teaches us how to build faith in our hearts. And it teaches us how to embrace the faith that causes us to experience God doing wonderful things in our life. And then Galatians 3 is convincing us that we'll be heirs of some pretty incredible things if we end up living with that kind of faith. And I want to tell you a story this morning that I'm just going to tell you part of, and then I'm going to finish the story at the end of my message. And it's a story about a young mom who sadly ended up getting polio. And when she had polio, she had two small children. One was a boy, the other was a girl. And the committee at her church asked the new pastor to go by her home and to tell her that they didn't want her to come to church anymore because she had polio. Now, back then, polio was a highly contagious disease. They didn't have all the vaccinations and things that cause us to fear it less. So she said back to the pastor, she said, pastor, I understand. She said, there's a lot of fear that people would have in being around me. So I'm okay if you don't want me to come to church. But then she said something so touching. She said, but pastor, I can't imagine living my life without serving God. So can you give me some things that I could do at my home so that I can continue to serve God and make a difference in people's lives. Well, this is where the pastor did wrong because he looked at her and he said, you have to understand with what happened to you, God can't use you the way that God used to use you in life. And that lady thankfully didn't listen to the words of that pastor, but she began to believe God would be good to her in spite of what she was facing. And one of the good things that God did was her little boy grew up not getting bitter at God because life wasn't perfect. He grew up not getting angry even at the church for not doing everything they should do, but her little boy became a successful pastor. How many of you think that's pretty awesome when somebody teaches their kids that God works for good in the midst of all things. But a lot more than that happened, and I'm going to talk to you about it at the end of the message today. But first of all, I want us to take some time, and I want us to learn how to build faith in our hearts so that we know whatever we're going through, you know what, God's working, and he's up to something good in the midst of my situation. Romans 4.16 says this, that therefore the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and it may be guaranteed to all of Abraham's offspring. So God wants us to live with the Spirit that says, God has made me promises to do good things in my life. And you know what? I'm not going to let discouragement, depression, the wrong emotions come into my heart because God guarantees me something beautiful is going to happen if I just let Him build the right kind of faith on the inside of my heart. And then this verse continues by saying that this isn't just for those who are of the law. This isn't just for Jewish people. This isn't just for black people or white people or Hispanic people. No, the Bible says that this is for everybody who has the faith of Abraham because God wants to be the father of us all. So how do we get that faith to start working? Well, there's six things that Paul tells us in Romans chapter 4. Number one, he says faith has to believe for God's promises. In other words, it isn't just going to happen, but we have to learn how to let God begin to get us believing for what He wants to do in our life. And if you study the Bible, this might be good to do this week. And if you go back to when Abraham is introduced to us in the Bible, he's introduced at the end of Genesis chapter 11, and then God makes promises to him at the beginning of Genesis chapter 12. And it's very, very significant how God introduces Abraham to us, because He talks about how men had built this beautiful tower, the Tower of Babel. And it became one of the wonders of the world, because people are very talented. And when people learn to maximize the talent God gave us, we can do some pretty amazing things. But how many of you know people who the talent they have is causing some good things to happen in their life, but then there are other things that just aren't going very well. And they're confused and they're depressed because of the part of their life that isn't going very well. And that's what faith is for, because what if we get God to work who knows everything about everything in that part of our life? And that's the message God gives us with Abraham, that faith is supposed to start eliminating depression and eliminating confusion in our heart. And if we start experiencing God right, we start getting a confidence that God has got to do something pretty amazing in that part of our life. So faith, first of all, It has to believe in God's promise. Here's the second thing. His faith relies upon God's grace or God's ability. Romans 4.16 goes on to say that the promise comes by faith that it might be by grace and might be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring. Now, if something comes by something, what does that mean? It means that if we're going to have God work in our life, we have to 1st let faith begin to eliminate all the negative emotion of our life. Then we need to understand that when we do that, when we decide to live by faith, instead of living by confusion or with depression in our heart, something's going to come to us, and that's the grace of God. Now let me give you an illustration, because Pastor Michael taught this good last week, and that is faith isn't a formula. Faith only has formulas. And so if we operate the way faith tells us to work, what's going to change our life is this grace that comes into our heart and it begins to change everything. I'll give you an example that's very natural that'll help us understand this. I live out in the country. And in the country, I'm so grateful for my water well, because I couldn't live very long without water, right? But if that well is going to come to me, if the water through that well is gonna come to me, somebody needs to know how to drill, and they need to know where that water table is so that water comes to me. Somebody else has to understand how to take the water filter and the pump and use all of that to get me fresh water. Well, that's what our faith does. Our faith goes down into the presence of God, and it causes God to begin working for good in our lives in the midst of all things. Here's the third thing we learned about faith in Romans chapter 4, and that is faith lives empowered by God's power. You Notice chapter four, verse 17 says, As it's written, I've made you a father of many nations. And this is very powerful, that when God called Abraham, his name was Abram. And Abram means exalted father. And God said, You're not just gonna be an exalted father. You're not just gonna be somebody that I bless, but in my eyes, I want you to know I see you as the father of many nations. And I see the world being blessed through your descendants. And the Bible says that in God's sight, Abraham was the father of us all. And it says, because Abraham believed, because his faith caused the grace of God to come into his life, God gave him life, and God called dead things into being. Now, how does that happen? Well, the next thing we read is that Abraham had to believe in hope against hope. And we're going to go back to Genesis 12 for a second, and this is where God called Abraham, and it tells us that the Lord had said to Abram, that may bless some of us today, because maybe God has talked to you many times, and you know God wants to do good things in your life, but you just feel like you've been stuck, and you can't move forward in a part of your life. it's because if we don't deal with the things that block God's grace from working in our lives, then we're going to stay stuck where we are instead of stepping into what God has for our life. And God identified three of them with Abraham. He said, first, I want you to go from your country. In other words, I want you to leave what's comfortable. And I want you to start seeing yourself the way I see you, instead of staying in the same mindset that you're living in. Second, he said, I want you to leave your people. And how many of many times living to please people is what's keeping us from really living to please God and then having God take us places where we've always wanted to go. And then he said, I want you to leave your father's household. And he said, Abraham, if these three things will be removed so that my presence isn't blocked in your life, you'll be amazed how many good things I do in your life. Now, there can be all kinds of things that are blocking God's presence in your life this morning. But if you'll just get quiet and listen to your heart, you need to start calling out that depression. And you need to start saying to that depression, depression, you're not going to win this battle. God's going to win this battle. You need to start calling out that anxiety. And you need to say, anxiety, I don't fear tomorrow because I know who's holding my hand and he's able to bless me. Can you say amen? Whatever it is, we've got to call it out and challenge it and say, I want to see what God's grace can do in my life. And when you do that, don't expect things to just change overnight. The reason many Christians aren't blessed is because they want God to do things overnight instead of understanding God does things over time as we treasure His leadership. So Abraham, against hope, had to, in hope, believe. And then the next thing it says is the fifth thing, that faith starts winning over our weakness. It says without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old. Now can you imagine God promised him at 75 he'd be the father of many nations, and he's 99, and God's saying, don't you give up on the promise, because I have the ability to bring this promise to pass in your life. Now I did some research this week, and you know the oldest father there's ever been outside of Abraham, there's a dude who's 96 years old in India. You can Google it yourself, and this dude's holding a baby. How many of you know that baby's gonna be holding him pretty soon if he's holding that baby? And then the oldest woman who ever had a child was 66 years old. And there's a reason for that. When women get 50, their body ceases to produce eggs. And so this tells us that Abraham looked at his body and he said, well, I'm as good as dead. And he said, Sarah's womb is also dead. So think about it. When Abraham looked, if he looked at his own body, he would have said, no way, Jose. When he looked at Sarah's body, he would have said, double no way, Jose, that we could ever have a child, except what happens when God begins to work in a part of our life. And we have to understand that our faith is so precious. Our faith is going to cause God to bless us in ways no other human being on the planet could ever bless us. And we need to understand, If we care about the development of our faith, it's going to put us in touch with the grace of God that begins to do things that we could never do in a season of our life. And then we need to know that if it's working, we're going to feel the life of God. We're not just going to be quoting formulas and saying things, but we're going to know that God is at work in our life. And when that happens, many times we have to, against hope, believe in hope, because we've lived in this condition that's below God's best in our life for so long. And when that happens, people just tend to give up, don't they? And the Bible says, don't you give up and don't let your faith weaken. And then the next thing it says is that Abraham didn't let his faith waver either. It says he didn't waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but he was strengthened in his faith. and he gave glory to God. And how long did Abraham do that? Now, this is important. Here's the 6th part of building faith in our heart, and that is faith doesn't work until it's fully persuaded. And it says he was fully persuaded that God had the power to do what God promised he could do. Now I'm sure many of you are out there today and you're saying, Pastor, how do I become fully persuaded? Well, I'll tell you how it's happened for me, and that is when I really give God my heart and He starts working a little bit every single day. Pretty soon I know it's God who's been working in this part of my life. And it may not change overnight, but I know what God's telling me about my marriage can make my marriage a whole lot better. I know what God's saying to me about my kids is going to tear in their heart one day. I know that what God's speaking to me about in terms of my physical health, I know God's helping me because, you know what, my heart is feeling God at work in my life. I love Second Chronicles 16, verse 9. It says, The eyes of the Lord look over the whole earth. And what's he looking for? He's just looking for somebody whose heart will be perfect towards Him, somebody who will trust Him. And God says, I'll tell you, if they will have strong faith, I promise you, I will do strong things on their behalf. I'll bless them more than they ever dreamed they could be blessed as people. Can you say amen? I told this story before, but I want you to look at it in a new light. When I started preaching, I thought, God, why would you call me to preach? I don't have any preachers in my family. I don't necessarily even like getting up and talking in front of people all the time. And then one day I read 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and it says, God calls the people nobody else thought. And I thought, okay, now I know why you called me to do it. And you know, it didn't happen overnight. I remember As a young preacher, there was a pastor who let me preach in his church because he was tired. And so I ended up preaching, and his assistant was there with me. And this pastor didn't even come to the church when I was preaching. He went golfing or something to get refreshed. And to be honest, he probably would have got more refreshed out on a golf course than listening to my sermon that morning. And I'll never forget, the deacon in charge took me to lunch, and he looked at me and he said, What do you think God's gonna accomplish with your life? And his tone of voice said, With a sermon that bad, are you sure you're supposed to be in the ministry? And I looked back at him, and I just got a little cantankerous in me. And I said, Well, when I was a young Christian, I said, I never would've dreamed I'd be called to preach, but I was at third base on the baseball field at Oral Roberts University. And I know God spoke to me, and he said, I want you to build a church that will help people like you who didn't understand how to walk with me. I want you to teach them how to walk with me so my goodness can be displayed in their life. And I looked back at him and I said, all I know is I'm supposed to try to build a church where people who don't know how to walk with God end up learning how to walk with God. And he said, well, that's a big dream. And I know what he meant was that's a big dream for the sermon that I just heard. But you know what my dad taught me? My dad taught me, Jim, when people laugh at you, laugh with them. Because most of the time they're right whenever they laugh at you. But how many of you know God loves reaching down to the people in the gutter? God loves taking us from the guttermost to the uttermost. Come on, somebody. He loves showing what he can do in people's lives. And Abraham understood that. And God says, when we read Galatians chapter 3, he says, this is what I want you to understand. that your life isn't supposed to just be defined by what you can do, by what your skill can accomplish. Because there are going to be a lot of areas in your life where you have desires to be blessed, and you're not going to know how to do it. I want you to know that's what faith is for. And if you build faith in your heart, you'll see Father God do a lot of beautiful things in your life. So in Galatians 3, here's what Paul tells us today. He begins to talk to us about how we began to live as heirs of God's promise. In other words, you know, if you were an heir, if you found out today that you had some aunt that you were kind to when you were little, and she left you about two or $3 million, how many of you know you'd be pretty excited, right? And God's saying His promises should produce that kind of excitement in our life. And He tells us four things that we need to understand to live as an heir of God's God's promise. Number one, God's blessing happens because of how God's working in our life. Galatians 3.15, he says, brothers and sisters, 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 the case. And he's making the case here that the reason a lot of Christians don't have God doing more in their life is because they don't know what God has made a covenant with us to do in our life. You see, when we get married, we're supposed to take a covenant with each other. Tamra said, for better or for worse. She got better some days, but how many of you know she didn't get better every day? Can you say amen? And knowing that she was going to show up and believe for a good marriage, if we didn't both show up, we wouldn't have a good marriage today. And the same way, you've got to know God's going to show up in your life. He made five covenants with us. And I'm just going to give them to you quickly. He gave us the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never again destroy the world with water. That's what we're to think of when we see that rainbow come in the clouds. The Abrahamic covenant, God said to us that if we'll honor his ability to work in our lives, he'll bless us in ways we could never experience if we didn't give God our hearts. Then he gave us the law. He gave us the Mosaic covenant. And what God gave us in that covenant is, if you'll do right, instead of letting sin get you to do wrong, you'll be protected by my truth. You'll be blessed by my truth. I can honestly tell you, as a young man of 17 years old, I didn't know how to live the Spirit-filled life. I didn't know what the Holy Spirit would do with my life or that He even had a plan for my life. But I would be in church today in my 60s, even if the Holy Spirit didn't do anything in my life. Because all I knew at 17 is that I didn't want to go down the path that I saw the guys I played football and basketball and baseball with. I knew the way they were living, that You can sow your wild oats, but how many of you know you're going to get a harvest one day, right? And so I decided I didn't want to live that way. That's just one of the five covenants that God made. He gave us the Davidic covenant. You know what the Davidic covenant is? God said the Messiah is going to come through the seed of this man, David. And when your heart just gets overcome with the Bible, when you just make a decision that you're going to spend time with God, you know what happens? You strike gold. All of a sudden, you know that God is talking to you, and that's where your blessing is. Some of you, you can fix anything. You know, something breaks down in our house, Tamara looks at me and she doesn't even think about me fixing it. She knows the only way I'm gonna fix it is if I call somebody who knows how to fix it. That's how I get things fixed. But some of you, you have that ability. God's putting dreams in you, and He wants to be a Father to you. He wants to bless you. He wants to help you. sometimes in church, I've watched over the years, and sometimes you'll have somebody who's not even living real good, but they have a lot of faith in God. And somehow God will just bless them. And these people over here will go, well, why isn't God blessing me? Because I'm living better than they are. Well, you got the same problem the prodigal son had. You got to realize our God's a Father, and how many of you are glad it's always His heart to bless us because our God's so good, right? But we've got to believe it. We got to understand the covenant. The second thing Abraham said, or Paul said is this, that faith relies on God. That it doesn't just do it in its own, and it understands that the law was sent to educate us. It wasn't sent in power or blessing. So think of it this way. If I was a dad, And I taught my son to cut the grass, and I taught him, how to shine his shoes, and I taught him all these things about his life. Those are good things. It makes him a better person. But what if I become a dad who not only requires my son to learn how to do some things right, but now I'm a father to him. And I'm in touch with the deepest concerns that are in his heart. And I tell him, son, I'm going to be there for you no matter what you ever go through. My passion, son, is to bring out the greatness that's on the inside of you. Listen, son, whatever you go through, there's one thing I want you to know, and that is you can count on your dad to work for good in your life in the midst of all things. If you blow it, I'm going to show up, and I'm going to love you through it. If you make mistakes, if I have the answer, trust me, I'm going to give it to you. If I don't have an answer, which God always has an answer, I'm going to find an answer. That's how much I am committed to making your life good. Now, when we understand God that way, it starts changing everything. And that's why Paul gave us these four things that I'll give you as I move towards my close. And that is, if you want to be an heir of God's promise, remember, blessing happens because of how He works, not because of how you work. And ask yourself, how much is God working in my life? Number 2, remember God's law was given to educate us, but His Spirit was given to empower us. Number 3, God's supernatural blessing comes through surrender. He said, so the law was our guardian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. And now that faith has come, we're no longer under a guardian. In other words, if you love Jesus, and if you want to please Jesus, you don't want to break the law. Can you say amen? You want to do right if you're serving Jesus. And here's the final thing. He said, if you'll do this, if you'll make pleasing the Holy Spirit in your heart your ultimate goal, he said, it'll be revealed to you that you are loved by God through the way he treats you as his son or daughter. That's why Paul closed by saying, so in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. And he says in verse 29, if you belong to Christ, then you're Abraham's seed and you're heirs according to the promise. In other words, when Paul looked at the Judaizers, they were being trained by people. People were telling them, you're not doing good enough. You're not doing this right. You're doing this wrong. And Paul said, hold it. That's not how faith works. Faith works this way. God's a father. And when we go through hard times, God the Father looks at our life and He's thinking about how much He wants to love us whenever we go through hard times. And if we'll turn our heart towards Him in faith, then God says, You know what? If you turn your heart towards me in faith, I promise you that my eyes are going over the whole earth. I'm just looking for somebody whose heart will turn to me so I can do something great on their behalf. And you know, that's what that lady did that I started my sermon by talking about. When that preacher left, she just kept serving God. She just kept rejoicing in God with her children. And like I told you, her son became a successful pastor. But not only that, about a year or two later, another pastor knocked on her door because I guess the first one got fired. How many of you think he deserved to get fired with what he said, right? And the second pastor came to her and he said, Ma'am, he said, we have a Sunday school room, but we don't have any kids in that Sunday school class in our church. You have two kids. Would you consider coming back to our church and teaching Sunday school in our church? And her son, who's a pastor, said, My mom would pour into us in that Sunday school room. And she said, When there were two of us, she would pour into us like we were 2,000. And then it grew to four people, and she said she would pour into us like we were 4,000 people. And pretty soon she started sharing God's love and God's truth so well within that church that it grew from four kids to eight kids to 10 to over 100 kids. Then she started thinking about all the kids in town who needed to know God loved them, and they needed to know God wanted to bless them. And she got an idea. She went to a man who owned all these buses that he would rent out to people, sometimes sell to people. And she went to him and she said, I need a bus. And he said, Well, man, this is how much the bus costs. Can you afford a bus? And she said, Oh, no. She said, I can't afford a bus, but I need a bus because God needs a bus because there are kids all around this town who need God to help them. And this man just kind of looked at her and he said, Well, ma'am, I can't just give you a bus, but if I did give you a bus, who would drive that bus? And she said, Well, I never thought about that. I just know God needs a bus. But then she said to him, Can you drive the bus? And he said, Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. He said, For one day, I'll give you a bus and I'll give you a driver, and let's see what you can do if I give you a bus and a driver for one day. Listen, before that lady was done, she had 5,000 kids in her Sunday school. Buses running all over town. You say, why, Pastor? Because she struck gold. How many of you are determined? Confusion, depression, All those things that are working on our hearts today, no, they're not going to win. Like the Apostle Paul, we're going to say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Can you say, give me a good amen this morning, Faith family?