All right, brethren, let's turn
to Galatians chapter one. Galatians one. I've titled this The Gospel of Grace
and Peace. The Gospel of Grace and Peace.
We're gonna take the first five verses here, and in these five
verses, the Lord, the Spirit of our Lord declares through
Paul that salvation is all of God the Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ. It's all of God the Father and
our Lord Jesus Christ. He gets all the glory. Let's
read this together. Paul, an apostle, not of men,
neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who
raised him from the dead. and all the brethren which are
with me unto the churches of Galatia. Grace be to you and
peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who
gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this
present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father,
to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Let's go to the Lord,
brethren. Our Heavenly Father, we come
to you in the name of our Lord Jesus. We ask you today to be
with us. We ask our great prophet, priest,
and king that you would be in our midst just as you've promised,
Lord, that you would speak this gospel to our hearts, cause us
to see you and believe you, Fill our hearts with adoration. Make
us truly worship. Lord, forgive us our sins. We
ask it in Christ's name, amen. All right, brethren. Now, the
reason for this letter is because of Judaizers. Now, when you hear
that word, Judaizer, don't just think back to those days and
think, well that was just people that was back then. There's Judaizers
today. There's people today. And here's
what they were doing. I'll show you exactly. If you
go with me to Acts 15. Acts chapter 15. The Lord had
sent Peter down to Cornelius' house to preach the gospel. He
was a Gentile. Cornelius was a Gentile. And Peter went and preached the
gospel and the Lord saved Cornelius and the elect in Cornelius' house. Well, after that had happened
some men came down to where these Gentile believers were, some
Jewish men. And they came down and here's
what they said in verse 1, Acts 15, 1. And certain men which
came down from Judea taught the brethren and said, except you
be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved.
They're saying, except you keep the law, you can't be saved. Now, verse six. And so the apostles
and the elders came together to consider this matter. And
when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up and said unto them,
Men and brethren, you know how that a good while ago God made
choice among us that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word
of the gospel and believe. And God, which knoweth the hearts,
bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did
unto us. And he put no difference between
us and them, purifying their hearts by faith. You see that? Purifying their hearts by faith.
Now, therefore, why tempt ye God to put a yoke upon the neck
of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able
to bear? But we believe, that through
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved even as they. These Gentiles never had the
law. And Peter says, by the grace of the Lord Jesus, we're gonna
be saved like these Gentiles are saved. Not with us keeping
the law, but by the grace of our Lord Jesus. By his grace. And that's how all his people
are saved. So these Judaizers, They are real worshipers. They're
folks who today that say that they made a decision for Christ
and they walked to the front of the church and gave their
heart to Jesus and this and that, and that it was by them making
this decision for Christ that they made his blood effectual
for them. That's giving man glory. That's
saying it's of man. And like these men were saying,
Another very common thing is for men to say, now, it's okay
to believe Christ, but except you keep the law, you can't be
saved. When they add that word except,
they're making that to be a requirement in addition to Christ. And that's
not the gospel. It ceases to be the gospel. And
so they had come into the church at Galatia and they were trying
to turn the Galatians back to the law and back to their work.
away from Christ. And so that's Paul's reason for
dealing with this. Now I'm going to show you three
things here from these five verses. I'm going to show you that it's
God who makes his witnesses. That's what we all are who he's
called, we're his witnesses. And it's the Lord who makes his
witnesses. And then secondly, it's God who
gives grace and peace. He saves us. That's what he uses
us to bear witness of, and we'll see who gets the glory. Now first
of all, it's God who makes his witnesses. Paul here starts out
saying he was an apostle, and he said in verse one, not of
men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who
raised him from the dead. Now these well-worshippers, these
legalists that had come in, they came in saying that Paul was
a false preacher. They were trying to discredit
what he preached, the gospel he preached by saying he was
a false preacher. So Paul wastes no time and he declares right
away that he was an apostle by the Lord Jesus, by God the Father. And the reason he says here that
by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead,
is because when the Father raised Christ from the dead, he gave
him the glory of being the head over all things to the church.
He gave him the glory of being the prophet, priest, and king
of his people by whom we believe. We believe by Christ. You know,
well, let's just look to your left. It's right there, close.
I'm sorry, to your right. In Ephesians 1, verse 5, When God chose his people, it
says verse 5, he predestinated us unto the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will.
That means he set the time, the exact time when he would send
the gospel, he would quicken us and give us faith to believe.
And you notice there, it's by Christ Jesus. It's by him that
we're given faith to believe. Go with me to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter
1. And look here. Peter says, we were redeemed
by Christ. Verse 18, he says, you know you
were not redeemed with corruptible things, a silver and gold, from
your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers,
but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, who verily was ordained before the
foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times
for you, who by him do believe in God." It's by Christ that
you believe. That raised him up from the dead
and gave him glory. He gave Christ the glory. of
calling out those that he redeemed, that your faith and hope might
be in God. So we're called by Christ. That's
why Paul said, I'm an apostle, not of men, not by man, but by
God the Father and his son, Christ Jesus. And we know from Ephesians,
it's the Lord who gives his preacher, he that ascended he fills all
and he gave some preachers, he gave prophets and apostles and
pastors and teachers and evangelists. He gives the minister. But when
he calls you, when he calls me, he makes all of us his witnesses.
We are witnesses of him. And this is the first thing we
are going to say. It wasn't by our will that we believed What's
a witness do? A witness testifies of what they've
seen, what they've heard, what they've experienced, what they
know. And our witnesses, we didn't by our will believe, it was by
Christ calling us. He made us his witnesses. Just
like Paul said, he made me an apostle. Paul was a, he was a,
he was one of these people. He was a will worshiper too.
He was a legalist. thought, you know, because he
was born in Israel, that made him God's elect. He thought that,
you know, being of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, he was circumcised the eighth day. He was trying to
keep the law and thought he had kept the law. But on the road to Damascus,
he has letters. He's going to arrest true believers
and have them thrown into prison and probably put to death. He
held the coats of men when they stoned Stephen to death. And
so he's on his way to Damascus, and the Lord Jesus appeared,
and the Lord Jesus called him. He had to be called personally
to be an apostle, so the Lord called him personally. But he
called him in power. This is how he calls all his
people. He called him in power, put him
in the dust, blinded him, put him in the dust, but he gave
him spiritual sight. and gave him life and faith so
that Paul quit trying to rebel against Christ and he believed
on Christ. And when the Lord did that to
Paul, Paul didn't say, I was saved back there when I was sitting
under Dr. Gamaliel, a Pharisee, and hearing
that I'm saved by my works. He didn't say I was saved back
there. I just came to a better understanding of who Christ is
on the road to Damascus. No, he said, I was saved on the
road to Damascus. He said, and all that former
confidence that I had that I thought was something, he said, I count
it all done that I may win Christ to be found in him. That's what
true repentance is. True repentance makes you turn
from yourself and everything that you've ever done, everything
you've ever thought was righteousness and hope, you repent from all
of it. And faith casts all our care
on the Lord Jesus and says, I don't want to try to come before God
with a righteousness of mine, a righteousness by my works under
the law. I want to come robed in his righteousness
alone. That's what Christ does when
he calls his child. He makes us know Christ alone
is salvation. Now, anybody who's lost, my message
to them, the message of this book to them is believe on the
Lord Jesus. And I'll tell you this, through
this gospel, when Christ calls, that sinner's gonna believe.
There's not gonna be some wrestling around and trying to mull it
over whether or not. No, when he shows you he is life,
When He shows you He's the way, He's the truth, He's the life,
there's no coming to the Father but by Him. When He does that,
Scripture says, He makes us willing in the day of His power. He gives
you a new heart, a new will, and you're gonna believe on Christ.
It's irresistible grace, sovereign power. That's how He saves. Now
secondly, it's God our Father and the Lord Jesus who gives
his people grace and peace. If you summed up salvation, this
is what it is. It's God giving us grace and
peace. He says here in verse three, grace be to you and peace
from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. That's not really
a salutation. It truly, all grace and all peace
comes from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now you're
gonna hear, you'll hear false religion use the word grace,
definition of grace is totally foreign to the Bible's definition
of grace. Grace in the scriptures means
unmerited favor of God. We did nothing. There was nothing
in us that made God give us grace. There was nothing that we did
to earn God's grace. Grace is God's free favor, and
God gives grace to whom he will give grace. That's right. We looked recently at Romans
9, but go there with me again. I want you to just see why God
say, why does he choose whom he will in Christ in eternity? Why did he do that? Look here
at Romans 9, 11. For the children being not yet
born, neither having done any good or evil, they're in their
mother's womb, same father, same mother, had not done anything
good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election
might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth. It was said
unto her, the elder shall serve the younger. As it's written,
Jacob have I loved, but he shall have I hated. Now are we gonna
say that's unfair? What shall we say then? Is there
unrighteousness with God? God forbid. He said to Moses,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion, so then it's not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. It's God who gives grace. He
did it when he chose his people freely in eternity. He chose
whom he would. and it's by grace that we're
redeemed. The Lord Jesus Christ came, the
Son of God came down from glory to this cursed place and he lived
the life his people couldn't live and then he went to the
cross and was made sin for us and bore the curse for his people
and saved us, he redeemed us. You know the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ, scripture said, how that though he was rich,
he's God, he had everything, he made everything, but though
he was rich, yet he became poor. Look to the cross. Forsaken of
God, forsaken of his people, there bearing the hell that all
his people deserved, he became poor. that through his poverty
you might be made rich. That's all of grace. The grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ did that. And then it's by grace
that he gives us faith to believe in. Look at Ephesians 2. Ephesians chapter 2. We don't, you know, when you're
bearing witness of Christ, the Lord hasn't sent his preacher
to try to come up with something to say on our own. He sent us
just to show his people what he has already shown us and what
he says in his word. So I'm just trying to turn you
to these scriptures to show you this is what it means to be saved
by grace. God chose whom he would, the
Father did. Christ Jesus redeemed us. And
look here now, and we're quickened by grace. Verse four, Ephesians
2.4, we were dead in sins. just like everybody else in the
world. But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith
he loved us even when we were dead in sin, hath quickened us
together with Christ. By grace you're saved. By grace. He raised us up together,
made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that
in the ages to come, He might show the exceeding riches of
His grace and His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For
by grace are you saved through faith. And that's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God. He gave
you faith. It's not of works, lest any man
should boast. were his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus unto good works which God had before ordained
that we should walk in them. You see there where it says,
were his workmanship created in Christ unto good works? Those
good works, first and foremost, they're the works Christ Jesus
worked for his people when he walked this earth. God foreordained
that we're gonna walk in his good works. We're walking in
the righteousness he's made us. We're walking in the holiness
he's made us. And the only way we believe him
is because he came to these dead sinners and by grace he gave
us faith, quickened us and gave us faith to see him and know
him and believe him. You see, that's God. You know,
and set up and they do all these tricks they use in churches down
south. I grew up in the buckle of the
Bible Belt and they dim the lights and they play a sad song and
they get you all emotional and they tell you to come to the
front and they got people waiting on the side to take you in the
back and pray through with you. They'll take you back there and
they'll say, now you're a sinner, aren't you? Yeah, I'm a sinner.
You want to be saved, you don't want to go to hell, do you? No,
I don't want to go to hell. You want to go to heaven? Oh
yeah, I want to go to heaven. Well, repeat after me, and they'll
tell you what to say, and you say it, and they say, all right,
now let's be baptized, and you're saved. And nothing's happened. Nothing's gone on in the heart.
The Lord hadn't done, the Lord wasn't in the message, because
they weren't preaching the gospel clearly, according to the word
of God, and he don't bless anything but the truth. It was all just
a show of man to get that butt in the pew so they can get that
money in the tray so they pay the bills so they can attract
more to do the same thing. That's all it is, vain show.
We're saved by grace entirely. And when he gives you this grace
and makes you seek Christ, you have peace with God. And that
peace is all of God. The problem with the reason sinners
don't need Christ is most people don't think they're sinners.
Oh yeah, I've made a few mistakes, but I'm not a sinner. God's gonna
weigh it all out, and I hope my good outweighs my bad. But when the Lord makes you know
you're a sinner, that is so heavy on the conscience. You just can't
get any peace. You can't rest. because your
conscience is just tormenting you. And it takes the Lord when
he does this work of quickening you in your heart and turning
you to see Christ. The scripture says he gave this
ceremony of if a man had been defiled, they took a red heifer
and they slew that red heifer in place of the children of Israel
and they made this liquid out of it using the ashes and blood
and they took hyssop and they would sprinkle it on the people,
a clean man did that. And God would declare that they
were ceremonially holy, they were ceremonially purified by
that. Well, that whole law was to picture
what the Lord does. And as Hebrews 9 says, if that
ceremonially purified the flesh, which just was in ceremony, really
didn't make anybody holy, it was a picture. But if that ceremonially
did that, he said, how much more shall the blood of Christ purge
your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And
when the spirit of God makes you see how that Christ Jesus
offered himself without spot to God through the eternal spirit,
that he entered into glory, having obtained eternal redemption for
his people, He takes that message and that blood, and spiritually,
in your heart, He purges your conscience with it. He makes
you to stop looking at you, stop looking at your sin, stop looking
at hell, stop looking at all these things that's got you tormented,
and He makes you look only to Christ. And you see, and you
hear the Lord in this gospel, he says, there's sins and there
are iniquities, I remember no more. He says, where remission
of these is, there's no more offering for sin. And he makes
you hear that personally, that that's so for you. And when he
does that, oh, you talk about peace, you have peace with God. You know you've been reconciled
to God and you're in friendship with God And it's all in and
by Christ. Now look here, that's what he
says here. Look, who did it? He said, verse three, our Lord
Jesus Christ. What did he do? Who gave himself
for our sins. He's talking to people that have
been called believers. But we know it's Christ laid
down his life for those the Father chose and trusted to him. That substitution, Christ gave
himself in our place because of our sins. He gave himself
in place of his people. And look here, why'd he do it? That he might deliver us from
this present evil world. He did it. You see that? He did
that. He might deliver us. That's salvation. That's redemption to be delivered. There was a price owed. What
is it? Blood. You had to die. You're guilty.
He did it for his people that he might deliver us from all
these Judaizers that's out here preaching law and morality from
that wicked world. from all the wicked men and women
in this world who just hate God and want nothing to do with God,
period. And most of all, from this dead sinner that we are
by nature that was trying to come to God by our works and
what we had done. And when he works, he delivers
you from you and from every other wicked sinner in this world. from the grips of the devil.
He said, I came to destroy the works of the devil and he came
to deliver his people who through fear of death were all our lifetime
subject to bondage. And he delivers you out and it's
all according to the will of God our father. That's the law. The law of God and the will of
God. God's will to save the people,
and God gave this law that includes his will and his perfect holiness
and his righteousness, and Christ came and fulfilled that for his
people. He said, your law's in my heart.
He said this, look at John 6. John 6. John 6, 38. Let's begin in verse 37. He said, all that the Father
giveth me shall come to me, and him that cometh to me I will
in no wise cast out. For I came down from heaven not
to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. And
this is the Father's will which is sent me, that of all which
he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it
up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that
sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on
him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the
last day. I will. That he came to fulfill
the will of God, And he won't fail, he will not lose one of
his people. He's gonna save every one of
his people. So Christ makes his preacher, and he calls out his
people, he makes us his witnesses. He gives us grace and peace,
showing us that it's Christ who came and laid down his life,
gave himself for our sin, that he might deliver us from this
present evil world, And he did it all according to the will
of God our Father. And so when this message goes
forth, Christ gave the preacher the message and sent him. Christ
blesses it to the heart of his people, makes us his witnesses.
So it's all of him. It's all of him. And he does
it all with the truth of this word. He just has us look into
this word, and true preaching is this. They read the scriptures
and they gave the sense of it. You just read it and you just
say, here's what it means. And if you come to a passage
that's a little difficult to understand, you may take two
or three passages and say, now let's look over here and see
how he says the same thing in a different way. And you just
keep showing what God has said. And so it's the truth. But let
me show you something here. Why is it in religion, why is
it that men can claim that they sat under a lie, they were hearing
a lie preached. Years down the road, they start
understanding something of the truth of the scripture. And it's
just themselves, they've just seen it themselves and come to
an understanding themselves. Lord hadn't done it in their
heart because this is what they say. I couldn't stay under that
message anymore because I knew it was a lie. Now I had come
to these doctrines of grace, and I saw they were true, but
I couldn't stand that it was a lie. Well then, that's when
Christ called you and saved you, isn't it? Oh no, no, no, no,
but I was saved when I was sitting under that message. Why is religion the only place
where men can say, I heard a lie, but I believed the truth through
it? That's, it's the only realm in
which we say something so stupid. If you went into your bank and
you got $10,000 in your account and your banker said, you got
5,000, and you know, you got proof, I got $10,000 in my bank. Truth's gonna matter, isn't it? Because that's your life. You
gotta have that money. Well, when Christ makes himself
life to a sinner, we renounce everything that was
alive. We renounce all our works and
all our form of religion and we say, that was not the gospel. Yeah, they said in a church pew,
yeah, a man got in a pulpit and preached. They used words like
grace and faith and they said, salvation's of the Lord and it's
all of grace. But then they turned it over
into the sinner's hand. and said, but now unless you,
by your will, unless you accept Jesus and unless you do this
and you do that, and then you gotta go now and keep the law.
That's exactly what these people were saying to the Galatians.
And listen to what God says through Paul. Look at verse six. I marvel
that you are so soon removed from Christ that called you,
or from God that called you into the grace of Christ unto another
gospel, which is not another. But there be some that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an
angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that
which we've preached unto you, let him be accursed. And I'll
say it again, he said, if any man preach any other gospel unto
you than you've received, let him be accursed. That's what
a man will say when Christ has called him and made him. Christ
really called Paul on the road to Damascus, and he really gave
him repentance. And Paul said, this message is
telling y'all to go back to the law and telling you that you
can be saved by your works and that you gotta mingle your works
with the grace of God, that's not the gospel. That is a lie. You wasn't saved by it, and you're
not gonna be made holy by it, and you can't be made righteous
by it. He said, if it's grace, it's no more works. If it's works,
it's not grace. They don't mix. If we are saved
by grace, we're saved entirely by grace, and that's the truth.
and everything else is a lie, brethren. We're not trying to
be mean against people. But if you don't preach this
truth, it's the only thing God's gonna bless to save his people.
And so we declare it, and my prayer is that the Lord will
send it into a midst of folks that are hearing lies and call
out his people. But I'll tell you this, if he
saves them, he's bringing them out. He's bringing them out,
and they're gonna follow Christ, and they're gonna depart from
that. Who gets the glory? Look at the
last word, verse five. To whom be glory forever and
ever, amen. That means God gets all the glory. You're not gonna hear God's child
saying, you ask most people that claim to be Christians, you ask
them, how were you saved? You ask them that question, don't
say anything. Nine out of 10, the next word out of their mouth's
gonna be I. I. I did this, I did that, I
did the other. You ask God's people, how were
you saved? And shut up and listen. God. God, our Father, and our
Lord Jesus Christ, he saved me. To God be the glory. Let's pray,
brother. Our Father, we thank you so much
for saving your people by grace, for giving us peace through the
blood and the righteousness of your dear son. Thank you for
calling us and teaching us. Lord, we pray you keep us. We
pray you would keep us always looking to Christ and trusting
him. Lord, we ask you to bless this word, call out your lost
sheep, increase faith in those that you have called. Lord, we
need Christ. We need to know Him. We need
to be fed by Him. We need to follow Him. We need
to hear Him. Lord, increase faith in our hearts
that we may know if we have Christ, we have all. Make us to know
it, Lord. Make us to trust Him in all things. Forgive us, Lord, our sins. In
Christ's name we ask it. Amen.