Or if you take your Bibles, turn
back with me to Galatians 5. The text will be found in verses
1 through 6. Now, this last time we met together,
we went over chapter 5 and verse 1, the first part of it, pretty
extensively. Paul had stated here, those who
are an allegory. He, in the previous chapter,
stated an allegory that Abraham had two sons by two different
women. You remember Hagar was a slave
woman. He had Ishmael by her. But yet,
before this, God promised him a son that would come by Sarah,
and that was Isaac. And you know this, that God did,
by a miracle, give Isaac to that barren womb of Sarah, and it was a miracle of promise.
And both of these are allegories. Hagar pictures the law, and Sarah
pictures the covenant of promise. And these two sons picture everyone
underneath those covenants this morning. You are one of these
sons. You are either Ishmael or you
are Isaac. You are either a son of a bondwoman
or you are the son of a free woman. And he goes on to tell
us that the sons of Ishmael pictures everyone who desires to be saved
by their works. Anyone who desires to be saved
by the law in any measure. Now listen to that very carefully.
Any measure. Why don't, you know, not saying
that you gotta be saved by the law, but except for this one
part. Well, you're Ishmael. But everyone who is saved by
grace, by the unmerited favor of God, we're saved by a covenant
of promise, a covenant made before we were born, a covenant of sovereign
election that God purposed to save us, that Christ, according
to this covenant, came and saved us. And everyone who is chosen,
everyone who is redeemed, the Spirit of God will call them
to faith in Christ alone. And they'll believe on Christ
alone. They won't go back to the law.
And these are sons, and therefore you who believe. Listen to what
Paul says. He says this, stand fast. That's a military term. You know
in the military then they would fight shield to shield and they
would not want to give an inch of ground to their enemy. That's
what he's saying. Don't give an inch in this. Stand
fast in what? Liberty. Now what kind of liberty
are we talking about? We're talking about spiritual
liberty. The liberty wherewith Christ
hath made us free. Free from what? Free from the
law. I am free from the law. I am not under the law in the
least degree. I am absolutely, completely,
what Paul says in another place, dead to the law. Now how much
more free can you be? You have a criminal, he's convicted
and sentenced and the law punishes him and kills him. What more
can the law do? Can't do anything else. He's
not under it anymore. In Christ I've died. I'm there
to the law. And so Paul says, stand fast
in your liberty. Why? Because Christ is all my
righteousness. Now, how much righteousness do
you need to stand before God? Well, guess what? Christ is all
my righteousness. He's all of it. His righteousness
is mine. His blood offering has delivered
me from the justice of God. Can God demand twice payment?
Is that just? He can't. He won't. I'm delivered. I am free from the justice of
God. Never will God punish me for the sins that I committed.
He will never punish me for them. Why? Because they have already
been punished. This is the freedom we have.
And we are free from the bondage of fear and death. Why? because Christ rose from the
dead. You see, I was in him when he died, and I was in him when
he rose again. Therefore, what is death to the
believer but nothing but a conduit by which we receive all of the
blessings of promise. Death just delivers us to glory.
And so we're free from the fear of death, the sting of death. God who sent his spirit into
this world has freed us from the bondage of Satan. He's given
us spiritual life and regeneration. We are free from unbelief. You
realize that faith is not natural? What's natural is unbelief. That's
natural. And you that don't believe, listen,
you are enslaved to unbelief. You can't. You can't believe.
You can try. You can't until someone comes
and frees you to give you faith. I always give you that illustration
of the young woman. I think it's the best one. Danielle
came in here and she said, you know, when I was listening to
the gospel, I would not believe. She was adamant. She said, I
just didn't believe this mess. I didn't believe it at all. And
as I listened, I couldn't help but believe. She said, I couldn't
stop believing. Why? Because she was free to
believe. Free to love God and serve God. And therefore, if you've been
free, listen to the exhortation here. Stand fast in it. Don't
move from it. Don't be duped into moving away
from this. Because if you move from this,
You've moved yourself from the true gospel to a false gospel. Stand fast in the liberty. Stand
fast in this. Listen to this. Isn't this wonderful?
There is therefore now. Now Paul wrote that close to
2,000 years ago. And he meant right then. Now. No condemnation. You know what?
I can use that word right now. There is therefore now. 2,000
years later, now, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
If God would, by His grace, give us faith to stand fast in that,
how much peace would we have? How much joy? We're constantly
bombarded by the guilt of our sin, aren't we? I feel guilty
often. My sin feels like weights. But you know who's putting that
on me? Not God, me. Why? Because there is therefore
now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. I'm
at liberty. I'm free. And so you're in Christ
Jesus. But now then, listen, stand fast
in the liberty. But then he gives a warning here. He says, and be not entangled
again. You were once entangled with
the yoke of the law. You were once entangled under
the burden of the law. Now you're free. Listen, don't
go back. Don't be entangled again with
the yoke of bondage. Stand fast in the liberty and
be not entangled again. Now this yoke of bondage, it's
a metaphor that pictures something. We don't do this. Nobody has
oxen, do they? Maybe you do. Maybe you've got
some oxen at your house, but I haven't been out there. I just
don't know. Maybe you do. Maybe y'all plow. Chuck, you
probably plow, I guess. No, you don't. Nobody does this
anymore. But the picture is you have two
big ox and a yoke is a big piece of wood, a big bar that ties
these oxen together so that they can't go where they want to.
They can't go over this way. They can't separate their ties. And he's saying, be not entangled
with the yoke of the law again. In other words, listen, you cannot
mix Christ and the law. Do not entangle these two together. Do not yoke these two together. You can't mix works and grace.
Either you are saved by grace or you are saved by something
you do. You can't mix them. And it's a danger to do this.
The danger of false Christianity, listen, false Christianity does
not use the name of Buddha or Zeus or Allah. The danger of
it is that they use the name Jesus. Matter of fact, I believe
it's Jeremiah, God says, they used my word, but I didn't send them. They
used my name, they invoked my name. But I didn't send them. The danger rests in the subtle
differences, what men call subtle differences. Well, you believe
in grace, and I believe in grace too, but you know what? I think
you've got to do something. That's no subtle difference,
friends. That's a chasm. That's a gulf that cannot be
spanned. Mixing grace and works, law and
Christ. is a gulf that cannot be bridged. And Paul warns us of those who
would try to yoke them together. Believers, let us not be duped
by those who would promote freewill works religion because they are
seeking to yoke grace and works together. Do not be duped by
the legalism The legalism of man's religion that demands you
must do something to make the work of Christ effectual. Okay,
listen to me, what I mean by that. Christ did the work, right?
And they said, well, they all believe that. They all believe
he died for our sins. He rose again for our justification.
You say those words, and they say, yeah, yeah, I believe that. But the difference is they say,
yeah, he did all he can do. He did his part. Now you need
to do your part. No, you've mixed works and grace. You've mixed them. They demand
you to do something to make His work powerful to your soul. This idea that man is saved by
grace but somehow must finish their work, this has In our day,
they call this progressive sanctification. They say, yeah, we believe you're
justified by Christ, but you've got to sanctify yourself. You
do this sanctification by doing this, this, and this. You stop
doing this, this, and this, and then you become holier. You know
the only time the word holier is used in scripture is against
self-righteousness? I think Isaiah 63, I can't remember
exactly where it says. They say, I am holier than thou.
Anybody says that? They're trying to sanctify themselves. They say that justification is
by Jesus, righteousness is by Jesus, but sanctification is
a cooperative effort between me and Jesus. He did his part,
now I've got to do mine. No, you've yoked grace and works
together. You are now entangled with the
yoke of bondage. Friends, the danger of this is
this always, this leads to what we call apostasy. Apostasy is a person who professes
to believe salvation by grace. But when he turns to the law
again, he becomes an apostate. Someone who is turned from Christ. Turned from Christ. In 2 Corinthians
6, Paul said, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. A lot of people talk about marriage.
You know, don't marry an unbeliever. That's not what he's talking
about. He's talking about religion. Don't be unequally yoked with
false religion. Don't bind yourself to it. Now,
no doubt, believer, we were at one time under a yoke of bondage.
We were. either religion or of conscience
or of consequence. We were in a yoke, we were in
a trouble, we were in a bind. But if Christ has set us free,
why would you want to go back? Wouldn't it be silly if you had
a man in chains all of his life, he was in bondage, in a dungeon
all of his life, and somebody come along and set that man free.
He said, all right, buddy, you're free. And I'll tell you this,
you're not only free, the king of glory adopted you to be his
son. Now, how foolish would it be
for that man to run back to the dungeon, try to put on his chains?
And that's exactly what it is. It's foolish for someone who
said at liberty, go back to bondage. If Christ has merited all your
righteousness, then why would you try to provide your own? Well, Jesus did a good job of
my righteousness, but I need to add to it. No. His righteousness
is all my righteousness. I'm not going to add anything
to it. Jesus Christ is all my justification before God. Jesus
Christ is all my holiness, my sanctification. Why then would
I ever return to the law? You see, the natural man is not
a man of faith. A natural religion, by nature,
men have got to taste something, touch something, or feel something.
If I don't taste it, touch it, or feel it, it's not real. I
don't believe it. This is what man takes to religion.
If he doesn't feel his religion, if he doesn't think, if he can't
touch it. Just scrolling through, you can't
help but see it on Easter, you see the church services, The
big buildings full of gold and the men in robes and the smoke. They carry these big things with
wooden crosses on them. Why? They've got to see their
religion. They've got to see their Savior. It's not by faith. They're sights
and sounds. And so lost men under the bondage
of the law seek to merit their own righteousness. They find
their rest and assurance by looking at what they do, how they feel. You that believe, do you trust
how you feel? Man, my feelings are, I feel, there are times when
I'm so thankful, I'm thankful for those times where I feel
really close to my Savior. But most of the time I don't.
I don't trust my feelings. I trust Him. I don't trust my circumstance.
Everything's going well, we think, man, God loves me. Everything
goes to, everything turns to crap, what do we do? I don't
know if God loves me. What does that have to do with
it? Nothing. I believe God loves me because
of Him, and that don't change. And so therefore, as you as a
believer are never to look at your circumstance or your feelings
or your righteousness or your good works. Boy, look what I
did. I went to church today. What
does that do with anything? I trust Him. I trust Him. Paul tells us in Romans that
Christ is the end of the law. Listen to this. for righteousness. Religion believes the law is
a means of righteousness. No, Christ is the fulfillment
of the law for righteousness too. To everyone that believeth,
you believe? On him? Alone? Then he is all your righteousness. What does law have to do with
it? Nothing. He fulfilled the law. He magnified it. Go to Romans
11. I want you to see these Jews,
what Paul says about the Jews here. Romans. Now, nobody wanted to honor God
by the law more than the Jews, more than the Pharisees. Look
at Romans 11 and verse... Let's look at verse 6. Go back to verse 5, sorry. Verse
5. It says, even so, then, at this present time, there's a
remnant according to the election of grace. Just like God said,
I saved 7,000 men during Elijah's time, he said, even so, right
now, God has a remnant, a remnant of people, only a certain number,
I don't know who they are, but he's only got a remnant. And
they're according to the election of grace. And he said, if by
grace, it is no more of works. Otherwise, what? Grace, no more
grace. The moment you add a word to it, it's no more grace. Otherwise, he said, but if it
be of works, it is no more grace. Otherwise, work is no more work. If you mix them, you've ruined
the definition of both words. He said, what then? Look what
he says. Israel hath not attained that
which it sought for, but the election hath obtained it, and
the rest were blinded. What did Israel seek for? They
sought for righteousness by their own obedience. They really strived
hard. They were sincere. You realize
that they'd go out there and they'd count, they had to tie
the tenth of all they had. They'd go out there and count
the leaves on their trees and the fruit, and so they can get
exactly a tenth. Would you do that? Man, I wouldn't
last five minutes underneath that. Neither would you, and
listen, neither did they. Neither did they. For all their
striving, they did not, Paul said, they did not attain what
they sought for. If you are striving today to
be accepted by God based on what you do, you will not be accepted. I don't care how sincere you
are. There's a lot of people very sincere. The religious crowd
this morning is very sincere. They're so upset. Somebody marred their holy day. I think the president put some
transgender day on this day and they're all upset. I told you we do this every Sunday.
I don't know what their big hoopla is. It doesn't matter. Christ did rise from the dead
regardless of what they think about this day. Listen, they're trying to obtain
righteousness by their safeguarding God's holy day. They think they're
doing God a service. God don't need you doing His
service. They've marred this day a lot longer than just by
this one thing. Matter of fact, you're marring
it by trying to earn God's favor by your outrage. Those who seek for righteousness
by the law never obtained it. But the election hath obtained
it." What he means by that is the elect. Those that God chose
in election, they attained righteousness that they weren't even seeking
for. You know, I wasn't seeking for righteousness when it came
to me. Matter of fact, this righteousness
was mine before I even wanted it, before I even knew I needed
it. And then God in grace gave it
to me. and the rest are blinded. Believer in Christ, we have obtained
all that God requires. I want you to let that sink in.
We have obtained, we got it. Everything that God requires.
Why? Because God provided it. Everything
you need has already been provided. And the only way to mar it, the
only way to defile it, is to add anything to it. You add anything to it, it's
defiled. God pictured that by Moses. Moses,
he said, Moses, when you make an altar, I want you to take
stones, okay? You're gonna build me an altar. And he said, I don't
want you to take a hammer and chisel and do anything to it. He said, the day you put your
hand to it, the sacrifice is defiled. You make it look pretty.
You start chiseling out little cherubs and things on it and
making it look beautiful. He said, you've defiled the offering.
That's what it is when you add to the righteousness of Jesus
Christ. Our Lord pictured this also in
that the picture of the king and the
wedding. He said a rich man had a feast and he invited all these
people to come and remember they wouldn't come. And so he said,
go out in the hedges and the highways and you get the worst.
You get the scum. You get everybody that don't
have anything and you bring them in. And you remember they did. They brought those people lame
and maimed and hauled and they came in. And you know what he
provided for everybody? A wedding garment. Now he took off all those filthy
clothes that they had. I'm sure they scrubbed them down. You didn't get in there filthy.
You got in there clean. And then they put this garment
on him. But there was one man in there. He was different. He
stood out. He brought his own robe. And the king came by and said,
friend, why are you here? And the man couldn't say anything.
I'm sure that he thought that robe would honor the king. I
bet his mama made it. He said, my mama made this, and
it is absolutely gorgeous. The king's going to be really
pleased. That's what religious men think
about their works, don't they? God's going to be really pleased. It didn't honor the king. It
dishonored him. What was he actually saying?
He was saying this, your wedding garment wasn't enough. When you come to God by your
works, listen to what you're saying. Jesus, your work was
not enough. It was insufficient and I had
to add my own to it. What happened to that man? He
was cast out into outer darkness, where there's weeping and gnashing
of teeth. But you who believe, I want you
to see this, stand in this. Everything God wants, he's given
you. He wants righteousness, demands
it. Well, he gave you righteousness. He wants an offering for your
sin. Your sin has to be punished. An offering has to be made. And
God said, I've already made it. And both of those things are
only found in one person, Jesus Christ. That's the only one God
has ever accepted based on his marriage. How do I know he was
accepted? We know he's accepted because
God raised him from the dead. Paul said this, he was delivered
by the determinant counsel and foreknowledge of God, and you
by wicked hands are crucified and slain. But God hath raised
him from the dead, for the grave could not hold him. Why? Because there's no more
sin. He raised Him from the dead.
Therefore, you listen, Christ is all our salvation. We have freely taken then His
yoke, haven't we? He said, Come unto Me, all you
that labor and are heavy laden. You that labor to earn God's
favor, He said, come to Me. And I'm going to give you something
the law can't give you. Rest. Come unto me, all you that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." How beautiful
is this picture in the law? Those priests went in there day
after day after day, working and working. I thought about
what it takes to offer an animal sacrifice. I mean, the sweat
that these men... The temple was not a place that
was beautiful. It was bloody. It smelled constantly. Animal parts all over the place. They worked constantly. There
was no place for them to sit down. They were never finished. The law, you are never done. You're never going to earn enough.
You're never going to work enough. You're never going to be sincere
enough. You're never going to love enough. It's never finished.
Jesus said, why don't you just come to me and stop? Stop working. Come to me and
rest. Why? I finished the work. I'm done. Isn't that what he
tells us at the cross? It is finished. The person that believes in that
is a complete and perfect I remember Donnie Bell, I don't
know many of you, some of you don't know him. Used to be a
Pentecostal preacher. And when the Lord saved him,
he still had a lot of that running around business. And when I first
heard him, he was all over the place. He would run over here
and he would, and he was just so full of, man, he just zeal
and love. And I remember the first time
I, he preached on resting in Christ and he, he, My pastor
never moved from the pulpit. He stayed like this for decades,
right here. I've never seen a man move from
behind the pulpit. Donnie was all over the place.
And he said, I'm going to show you what it is to rest. And he
ran to the front pew and laid down. He just laid down. He said,
this is what it is to rest. It's to lay down on him. To rest
the weight of your soul on his blood and righteousness. and
not adding one thing to it is to believe he's sufficient. I believe this. God has provided
himself a lamb. God has provided himself. Not just for himself, God provided
himself. Jesus Christ is God in flesh
and he offered himself. I stand amazed to think he offered
himself for this most unworthy sinner. And then in an act of grace,
he showed it to me. He gave me the faith to believe
in it. We are under his yoke, and his
yoke is easy. He said, my yoke is easy and
my burden is light. My burden is light. I thought
of this hymn when I was writing my message. It's called Fountain
of Never Ceasing Grace. Listen to what it says. It says,
in thee we have a righteousness. By God himself approved. Our
rock, our sure foundation this. which never can be moved. Our
ransom by thy death was paid for all thy people given. The law was perfectly obeyed
that we might enter heaven." You see, He has provided all
that we need. This burden, this yoke is light. Believer, therefore why would
you want to be entangled again with the yoke of bondage? Why
would you want to go back? If you know what it is to rest,
why would you want to go back to work? No true believer in Christ begins
in grace and then is made perfect by the flesh. Again, this is
religion, isn't it? You begin by grace, everything's
good. By grace you're saved, they don't
die. But somehow you've got to finish
this thing. You've got to merit it. You've got to keep at it. We don't believe you begin by
Christ and end by works. This is what I believe. He that
hath begun a good work in you shall perform it. Now who's going
to perform it? He began a good work, well who's
going to finish it? The same one that began it. He
that began a good work in you, he shall perform it until he
comes back, until the day of Jesus Christ. He's going to finish
it. And so then, you that believe,
Paul tells you, stand fast in liberty and not be... If you
are entangled, what then is the result of it? Go back to your
text. Obviously, these people in Galatia
had turned back. They professed to be saved by
grace, but now this church, many in this church, not everybody,
but many of them had turned back to the law in one thing, one
area, circumcision, that's it. They said, well, we think you're
saved by grace, but in order to be a You need to be obeying the law.
Circumcision. Circumcision. You know what the
problem with that is? The law never said anything about
circumcision, except for the stranger. You ever notice that? Circumcision was given to Abraham,
not to Moses. You see, after God promised Jesus
Christ would come by His seed, He said to Abraham, He says,
okay, I'm going to give you a token, a picture of this, what's going
to happen when He comes. You're going to cut the flesh
off of every male child. But what this is, is a picture
of what takes place inside of everyone who believes. When someone
believes on Jesus Christ, you are spiritually circumcised. The flesh is cut off, and now
you are a new creature in Christ. That's all it was to men, is
a picture. It didn't mean anything else. It didn't really save you. How many people were circumcised
that went to hell? It didn't save you. It didn't
do anything for you. But yet the heresy was that they
took that and tied it to the law. That's exactly what religion
does. They take the New Testament of
God's grace in Christ and then they go back to the law and try
to pull the law into it. They try to take the law and
put it in there. Why do you think they suppose
infants need to be baptized? Do you realize it's not found
anywhere in this book? Infant baptism. Not found anywhere
in here. Why do you suppose the church
decided to start baptizing infants? What they did is took circumcision
and said, now it's baptism. That's all they did. They tried
to impose the law onto the covenant of grace. It's the same way with
the Lord's Supper. They say the Lord's Supper is
the new Passover. Why? Because the Lord instituted
it on Passover, but it wasn't a new Passover. And so they try to take the law
and impose it upon the gospel of grace. They tried to take,
link the Ten Commandments to our righteousness. Righteousness
obtained by Jesus Christ. But yeah, if you want to keep
it, you got to obey the Ten Commandments. See how they do that? They pull
the law and put it over into the covenant of grace. They've
been doing this for years, decades, hundreds, thousands of years. Look back at your text. What
does Paul say to someone who does that? Look at verse 2. Behold,
I, Paul, apostle of Jesus Christ, this is what I'm telling you.
I, Paul, say unto you, if you be circumcised, Christ shall
profit you nothing. Anybody misunderstand what that
means? I mean, little children can figure out what that sentence
means. I testify again, in case you
missed it. I'm gonna testify again. Every man that is circumcised,
that he is a debtor to the whole law, and Christ should become
of no effect to you, whosoever you are, justified by the law,
you are fallen from grace. Now listen, What Paul meant by
circumcision there is any part of the law. At this particular
time in Galatia, it was circumcision. In our day, most likely, it is
the Ten Commandments. This is what men believe is the
rule of their life. They believe you're saved by
grace. But the rule of your life is to obey the law, the Ten Commandments. Listen, if you want to be under
the Ten Commandments, you're under the whole law. Just what he said, if you're
circumcised, you're debtor to the whole law. You can't take
one part without taking the whole thing. You want to be under the
law? Then you're under all of it. That's, that's, it's, it's, You
would need a high priest. You would need an offering. You've
got to go over to Israel. You've got to knock down that mosque they've
got over there on the Dome of the Rock. You need to knock that
down. You need to build a new temple. You need to offer the
exact sacrifices. Why? Because that's the law,
too. That's just as much as the law
as the Ten Commandments. You're a debtor to the whole
law. This is the consequence of mixing works and grace. Christ
shall profit you nothing. Got that? Any confusion there? This is not popular, friends.
It's not popular, but there's no confusion about it. And Paul
said this, I don't care who you are. I don't care how many theological
degrees you have. I don't care how big your church
is. I don't care how religious or
moral you are. The moment you add your works to his, Christ
profits you nothing. If you mix any of your works
for the acceptance of God, Christ will profit you nothing. This
is what we call apostasy. Look at Hebrews 6. Look at Hebrews
6. Again, we're looking at the result
of mixing these two things. The result is apostasy. Hebrews
chapter 6. Look at verse 1. One, he said,
leaving therefore the principles of the doctrines of Christ, let
us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance
from dead works, faith toward God, doctrine of baptisms, laying
on of hands, resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
A lot of people take that saying, let's go on. Okay, you've talked
about Christ enough. All right. Paul said, let's move
on to bigger and better things. I think that's the most stupid
thing I've ever heard in my life. Paul said, let's go on from the
ABCs on to bigger things. What word can you write? What
word can you say without the ABCs? You start writing the words
and say, no, no, no. Go on from there. Well, how can
I stop talking? Because you'd have to stop talking
to stop using ABCs, wouldn't you? You see, the things of Christ,
what I'm saying is they're deeper than the surface things. We learn
these things, but they're much deeper, aren't they? Do you know
the love of God in its fullness? Do you know how deep it is? How
wide it is? How infinite it is? No. Well, go on and learn that. Do
you know how sufficient the blood of Christ is? Go on and learn
from that. There's more to learn. There's
more to know. Look what he says next, he said, this will do if
God permit, for it is impossible for those who once enlightened,
those who taste the heavenly gift, may partakers of the Holy
Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers to
the world to come. Listen, it's impossible if they
fall away to renew them again to repentance. Now listen, if
one professes to believe the gospel, professes to have the
Holy Spirit, professes to taste the good word of God, and yet
they turn away from the gospel. Listen, it's impossible for them
to ever come back. I didn't say it. He did. Why? Seeing they crucified to
themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame.
Now he gives an illustration. He said, For the earth which
drinketh in the rain cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs
and meat to them that are dressed, receiving blessings from God.
But that which beareth thorns and briars are rejected nigh
unto cursing, whose end is to be burned. Now it's an illustration
here. The gospel is like rain. He's
saying when the gospel comes down like rain, whatever is in
the earth is going to come out. All right? When God plants the word of God
into the heart of men and the gospel comes down, what comes
out? Spirit of life. The fruits of the spirit. But if the rain comes down and
there's briars and thorns, seeds for briars and thorns all in
the earth, isn't it? Weeds. You don't have to plant
those, do you? You plant weeds in your garden
or in your yard. They're already there, aren't
they? But look, you got one man who puts a seed right here and
then it rains and then two things are coming up out of the ground.
Wait a second, I didn't plant this one. But it's coming up,
and they look the same when they first come out, don't they? They
both are green. They both have stems. They both
have leaves on them. You can't tell sometimes which
is the weed and which is the flower. Cheryl was telling me
about the time Audrey was real young, and Cheryl was out there
digging up those dandelions, and Audrey was crying. She thought
she was digging up the flowers. Well, she's digging up weeds.
Those are weeds. And so what ends up happening
is these two grow out together. One yields fruit, one yields
herbs, one is profitable, and the other is a bunch of briars
and weeds. One is intended for the good
and one is intended to be burned. And this is the apostate. The
apostate, he wasn't planted of God, just that which is natural
comes out. How do you know if you're apostate?
Simply this, you mix works and grace. Or is Christ all? Is Christ all? Is he all my righteousness? Those that are planted of God,
when the word of God comes down, they spring out with faith in
Christ. Can an apple tree produce briars
and thorns? Is that possible? No. It can
only produce apples, right? Why? It's natural. And so then what are the briars
and thorns? It's simply this, it's mixing works and grace. Now look at this last part and
I'll close. Look at this. So you see that you stand fast
in Christ, don't mix works and grace. If you do, what's the
end result? Apostasy. Christ profits you nothing. But
listen, verse 5, for we, Sons of God, set at liberty, we through
the Spirit, listen, wait for the hope of righteousness by
faith. We wait for the hope of righteousness
by faith. He's not saying we're waiting
for righteousness because we already have it. You that are
believers in Christ, you already have righteousness. Matter of
fact, in Romans 3, he said Christ said that we have the righteousness
of God, which is by the faith of Christ, that is unto all and
upon all that believe. God has imputed righteousness
to you and in the new nature imparted it. You have righteousness.
How else can you have access to God? You couldn't approach
God unless you were righteous. God made you righteous. You have
it. But what is he talking about?
He said, we wait, we anticipate the fullness of this righteousness. Have you experienced the fullness
of righteousness? No. Why? You still have the old man
of sin, don't you? If you didn't have the old man
of sin, he wouldn't have to tell you, don't be entangled in the
yoke of bondage. Right. Why? Because the old man
is constantly being tempted by the law. I'm going to ask you
that believe. Do you long for assurance that
you're safe? When you don't feel safe, and
that's often, don't you long for that feeling of assurance? And so then we're often tempted
to look inside ourselves to find assurance. When you do that,
what do you find? You find assurance. I find sin. I find more to be
discouraged about rather than encouraged. So Paul is saying
this. We're tempted to look within.
We're tempted to measure our salvation based on what we do. Why? Because you still have that
old man of sin in you. Well, what's my hope? One day. There is coming a day when this
old man of sin will fall off. He'll fall off into the grave. Then I will experience what it
is like to be fully righteous. I have a hope. Now that word hope doesn't mean
wish, it means assurance. My assurance is Christ. Now if I want assurance, I look
to Him. But one day I know this, that
one day I anticipate to be with Him forever and righteous. But how do I know my faith is
genuine? This is how we wait, isn't it,
by faith? We live by faith, we walk by faith. This is how we
wait. Look at verse 6. For in Jesus
Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision.
It don't matter what you do. That's not going to avail anything.
What avails everything but faith that worketh by love? Listen to me, works never save
you. You're never to mix works and grace. Listen to me very
carefully. True faith always works. If you are already righteous,
then what's going to come out? Righteousness. Don't need to strive for it.
It just does. It does. And what is the evidence, then,
of my faith? It is this. Faith works by one principle. Love. One principle. One motivating
factor of faith is love. This is the motivating factor
of faith. Not my love for him, but his
love for me. Listen to what Paul said. The love of Christ constraineth me. There's a lot of sinful things
you want to do. Why don't you do them? Well, because I love Jesus. You're going to fall. Because
your love is fickle. by looking to the love of Christ
constrains us, constrains us to continually
look to him. I hope you've noticed that I
have one string on my guitar. I'm Christ and him crucified.
It's always pointing you back to him. I'm always directing
you to him because he alone is the object of our faith and love. But what sustains me is his love. What keeps me until I am fully
righteous is his love. So when I look at his love, my
heart melts. Doesn't yours? When I look at his offering,
my heart melts. When I look at his salvation,
I then have full assurance I'm going to be exactly what he purposed
me to be, righteous. I have hope. I pray God will
bless this to you. Stand and be dismissed in prayer. Lynn, dismiss us in prayer, please.