Father Abraham Had Many Sons--Galatians 3:6-9

Homiletical Outline: Read the Old Testament because it is you family history.

Purpose: My hearers should know that they stand in continuity with Abraham and they can thus read the Old Testament as their spiritual family history.

Faith was always the way of God’s family. (vv. 6-8)

It was the way for Abraham. (v. 6)

Paul has just listed for us several bullet points. Each of them show that salvation, being right with God, only comes by trusting solely in Jesus. Nothing else we do can add or take away from that.

He bolsters that point here by turning to the one person the Judaizers loved: Abraham.

The Judaizers kept saying, “Hey, we are following Abraham. Look at all his good deeds. Look how He obeyed God. Look how he was circumcised. You need to do the same thing for Christ to save you!”

What does Paul do? He quotes the Old Testament.

Galatians 3:6 KJV 1900

6 Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

This is the key idea that is essential to Paul’s argument against the Judaizers.

This is a quotation from Gen.15.6 . You can see it there on the screen.

Genesis 15:6 KJV 1900

6 And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

The Judaizers pushed circumcision for salvation used Abraham. So Paul uses Abraham and goes back 3 chapters earlier.

We have Abraham doing nothing but having faith.

It’s important for our purposes to note that Christ is not mentioned here. All we see is that Abraham believed in the Lord. What exactly did Abraham believe?

Genesis 15:5 KJV 1900

5 And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

How is this trusting in Christ?

Christ is the essence of every good promise made to Abraham, even if he himself did not know that.

Hebrews 11:8–10 KJV 1900

8 By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. 9 By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: 10 For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Christ is the essence of every good promise made to Abraham, even if he himself did not know that.

Abraham had an eye towards God, and it was credited to him, reckoned, as righteousness.

What does it mean that it was “counted” righteous?

λογίζομαι--to determine by mathematical process, reckon, calculate

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This does not mean that Abraham was actually righteous, only that he was declared righteous. He was considered to have a right standing before God. To use the proper theological term, God “imputed” righteousness to Abraham. God is the one who has the legal right to state whether a man is righteous or unrighteous, and in this case, he considered Abraham righteous through his faith.

A good example of what it means to be declared righteous comes from the life of the astronomer William Herschel (1738–1822). As a young boy growing up in Hanover, Germany, Herschel loved listening to military music. Eventually he joined a military band. But when the nation went to war, he found himself marching into battle, totally unprepared for the horrors of war. During a period of intense fighting he deserted his unit and fled from the field of battle. The penalty for desertion was death, so Herschel could no longer remain in Germany. He fled to England to pursue further studies in music and science. Eventually he became a famous man, renowned throughout Europe for his musical abilities as well as his scientific discoveries.

William Herschel had left his past behind him, and for many years he gave little thought to the death sentence that remained over him. But then another German arrived in Britain: George, head of the House of Hanover, crowned King of England. King George knew the secret of Herschel’s past and summoned him to appear before the royal court. With great trepidation, the scientist arrived at the palace, where he was told to wait in a chamber outside the throne room. Finally, one of the king’s servants brought Herschel a document. Anxiously, he opened it and read the following words: “I George pardon you for your past offenses against our native land.””

He was then knighted and given a position of honor by the king.”

What a glorious thing. Abraham, still a sinner, not close to being a saint, had only to reach out a hand to God and believe. And God said, “You are pardoned, Abraham. You are free.”

By the way, God put that verse in the Old Testament for us to learn from it. Rom.4.23-25

Romans 4:23–25 KJV 1900

23 Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; 24 But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; 25 Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

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When you read your Old Testament, when you read about Abraham, you are not reading the history of some person who climbed the ladder of works to get to God.

You are reading about a man who is the prime example of what it means to have faith in God. To believe in a savior. To trust in Christ.

Read your Old Testament realizing this. As you read Exodus, Numbers, Judges, and Proverbs, you are reading about people who were saved just like Abraham was: by faith in Christ.

Trans: Faith was always the way, and it was the way for Abraham.

It was the way for sonship. (v. 7)

Galatians 3:7 KJV 1900

7 Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

“Know ye ” = you need to understand this. Pay attention. Here is what this means. Since Abraham was saved by faith, here is one thing that means for you.

REC--Father Abraham was an important figure to the Judaizers, the goody-two-shoes of the apostolic church who believed in justification by faith plus the works of the law. If the Judaizers taught any Bible songs when they went to Galatia, they probably taught one that went like this:

Father Abraham had many sons,

And many sons had Father Abraham;

And I am one of them, but you are not,

So let’s all get together for a little procedure we like to call circumcision.

This verse undermines the Judaizers: it is not circumcision, but faith and faith alone. It is not who you were born but who you believe in that makes you a child of Abraham.

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Now, when we chew and stew on this, it raises a whole host of question. For example, how does this impact our relation to the the Old Testament?

We already saw that faith was the way of Abraham, and now we see it’s the way of sonship.

What does this mean for all of those promises made to the Old Testament people of God? For Jews today? How do we parse all of this out?

These are massive question that cannot be answered in one sermon. I am going to do my best to answer them. First I want to show you that this same idea is not unique to Paul. Turn to John 8.37-44 “37 I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. 38 I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. 39 They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham. 40 But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. 41 Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. 42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. 43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. 44 Ye are of your father the devil”

I also bring to our minds Rom.4.16

Romans 4:16 KJV 1900

16 Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all,

Here is the only way I can make sense of all of this teaching. I think it is faithful to all of Scripture and it changes how we read our Bibles.

There are two ways of being a descendant of Abraham: physical and by faith. According to Jesus, the true Sons of Abraham have always been those who are sons by Faith.

Jesus points this out in John 8: physical birth is of no spiritual value. It is and has always been by faith in God’s promise of Christ, however little that was revealed over time.

REC--Membership in Abraham’s family is not hereditary. Father Abraham’s true sons and daughters are not the people who keep the law, but the people who live by faith. Their family resemblance is spiritual rather than physical.

What this means is that the OC promises are ours. They were about what Paul calls true Jews (Rom.2.28-29). \

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Those promises in the Old Testament? Those are your promises. Those family blessings? Those are our blessings in and through Jesus Christ.

Proverbs 22:6 KJV 1900

6 Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Isaiah 41:10 KJV 1900

10 Fear thou not; for I am with thee: Be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

All of these precious promises are in the Old Testament. They are extremely precious. What should we do with them? Throw them away? Do you skip over this in your Bible reading because its all under the law?

No. We read them. We believe them. They are for us. You claim those promises.

Mom, claim that promise. Dad, believe that God will hold you up. He said so, even here in the Old Testament.

They belong to us, who have been grated into the one people of God (Rom.11.17-18).

What happened is this: the tree of God’s people are those by faith. For 2,000, most of those people were Jews. They made up God’s people. Now, we Gentiles have been grafted into the people of God.

It was the way of the covenant. (v. 8)

Faith remains the way of God’s family. (v. 9)