As we come to the end of Galatians,
Paul gets personal. This has been an emotional journey
for him, a deeply emotional journey, and the book of Galatians has
been for us from the beginnings of our church a book that has
been in some ways very instrumental in forming such clear foundations
of the Gospel amongst us. But it has, to us as it has with
our brother Paul, come with trials and tribulations And he finishes
this letter with these verses which are just so, so profoundly
important. We're looking at verse 16 this
morning. As many as walk according to
this rule, peace be on them and mercy upon the Israel of God. And he goes on to say, from henceforth
let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord
Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. As many as walk according
to this rule, as many as walk according to
this rule, peace Peace is the reward of those who walk according
to this rule. Mercy from God is the benefit
of walking of those who walk according to this rule. And the
Israel of God And upon the Israel of God, which is why Graham read
to us from Genesis chapter 32 about Jacob's name being changed. Jacob emblematic of so many things,
but Jacob given a new name indicating the new creation, the new man
that he was. And at the end of the day, The
great blessing of Jacob is the blessing of all the blood-bought
children of God. Graham read it to us there earlier. Jacob called the name of the
place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face and my life
is preserved. preserved by God. That's what
it is, isn't it? To have peace and to have mercy
from God. And according to what God says
in Galatians 6.16, those who walk according to this
rule have that. as their birthright and their
privilege and their comfort in this life and their comfort when
they leave this life to meet Him and to be with Him forever. To see God face to face and to
have your life preserved. And according to Galatians 16,
you can know about it now. Saving faith is a walk in the
light. It's not stumbling around in
the dark. And Paul, as we will see, Lord
willing, next week, was beaten to a pulp. Time and time again,
isn't it extraordinary, this man that wrote so much of the
New Testament went from town and beating to town and beating. He was dragged outside and left
for dead and we have in the scriptures just a glimpse of what he went
through. And God who loved him intensely
and passionately caused him to suffer so, along with the other
apostles, so that we might now in 2016 have a rule, have a measuring
line. to know whether we have heard
the Gospel, to know whether the Gospel has done the promised
work of God in our lives. These are fundamentally important
issues and I would just like to go through it effectively
word by word. Of course the rule that Paul
is talking here is actually laid out for us in the previous two
verses, so you don't have to go searching very far, you don't
have to look very hard, it is there very clearly before you. It is there laid out clearly
before all of the world. and all of the world of religion. It is laid out here in these
verses. We've spent some time looking
at them in the previous weeks. Verse 14, that God forbid that
I should glory, that I should boast, that I should have confidence
in, that I should find my rest in anything save the cross of
our Lord Jesus Christ, by Him the world is crucified unto me,
and I unto the world. For, or because, in Christ Jesus
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision,
but a new creature, a new creation. That's the rule, simply laid
out in a few verses for us. And as I have said on so many
occasions, and I believe it with all of my heart, if the religious
institutions of this world would simply throw away all of their
books of theology and history and their confessions of faith
and all of their traditions and all of the things that they work
up and just simply rested in what God says. They would flee. They would flee from all of those
places. May God help us to know clearly
what this rule is. May God show us what walking
in it is. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father,
we thank you again that the Lord Jesus promised that without Him
we can do nothing. And Father, we thank you for
the ever evident reality of our dependence upon you to do the
things you have promised in the lives of your people. We thank
you for your faithfulness. We thank you for giving us a
word, and we thank you, Heavenly Father, that by the Gospel that
word is made clear to the hearts of your people. and we pray,
Heavenly Father, that you would cause us to walk in such a way
that we, like Jacob, might see God face to face and have our
lives preserved. What a glorious, glorious son
we have to proclaim, our father. We pray that you would have him
preached before us this morning and you would honour your word
for the souls of your people. For we pray in his name. So the sentence in verse 16 begins
with and. And so it links it all together,
doesn't it? The and means even, or that is, all. All that would walk according
to this rule are the Israel of God. So here we identify the
Israel of God, the children of God. that nation of his, that
Israel of God which is going to be gathered into the new creation,
the Israel of God that the Lord Jesus shed his life's blood for. And then he goes on to say, doesn't
he, and as many, Paul believed the Gospel. He had seen
the Gospel at work in his life. He'd seen it powerfully work
in the lives of many others, and he knew, he knew that the
Lord had a many, a many. Not all of those who heard this
letter read in the Galatian church were brethren, but all the brethren
were. in God's time, they will take
these lessons to heart. They will just simply find themselves
believing. They'll find themselves at rest. This is the commandment of God,
isn't it? That we should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus
Christ, and love one another. This is his work in the lives
of his people. And the brethren will love Paul
and they'll be taught of God to love one another, as many
as walk. So walking refers to the general
tenor of life. We have seen in the beginning
of chapter 6 that there are situations, and Peter is an example, and
Paul is an example, and every single one of us is an example
of those who are overtaken in a thought. But there is in the
scriptures, there is just a walking, a walking, just a walking in
God, a walking with Him. According to, walk according
to, And this is a beautiful picture. It means to actually stand in
a row. When I was at primary school,
As Miss Emily might see soon, and all through my high school,
we spent an awful lot of time standing in rows, didn't we?
I don't know whether you kids still do it or you're in a little
sort of urge these days, but we spent ages and ages standing
in line. Lined up in our classes, lined
up for sport, lined up for other things. And when I went to primary
school I was so intensely shy that I just had absolutely no
capacity to speak, ever, to anyone in public. And I just found it
really difficult. I hated being at the front of
the line because then you were in some doubt. in some doubt
about where you had to go and how clearly you were directed. But if I was in line, if I was
in the middle of the line, I believe when I was second in line, I
don't know about you, but I felt very comfortable as a little
tiny kid. I was just there and I would
just stay in my line. That is exactly, that is exactly
what Paul is saying here. It's a military term as well,
isn't it? It's used for the ranks of soldiers. It's to be marched in a rank
for a file. It's to stand in a battle line.
But it's to be in a line. As many as walk in this line. All lined up. All lined up. As God promises, isn't it? They
see eye to eye. They all line up. Why? because they're taught of God.
And Craig's a teacher, some of the others here have been teachers,
and we struggle, we struggle trying to communicate things
and you struggle, you feel like sometimes you need a sledgehammer
to get it into someone's head. God is a very good teacher. He's a remarkably good teacher.
And when he teaches, his people get the lesson, which is why
he can say, his people line up, his people walk according to
this rule. Now that word rule is the word
that we get canon from. It's the canon of scripture.
It is. The measuring rod is what it
was. It was what you used to measure things. It was what you
used to measure a long jump in an Olympic Games. It's what you
used to measure height. It's a measuring rod. It's a
carpenter's line or a measuring tape. And those are not arbitrary things,
are they? I don't know whether it's still
the case, but they used to preserve, I think it was in London somewhere,
they used to preserve in some special atmosphere. Craig might
know, but there was a thing called a foot, and it was a piece of
metal that at a certain temperature was exactly a foot long, and
every other foot in the world was measured off that foot. And
so they had all sorts of measuring things, isn't it? How did we
know that we're doing so many kilometres an hour? We have measuring
rods, and they are accurate measuring rods. So here we are. This, as we keep saying, the
scriptures are the measuring rod. Here you have a measuring
rod. If you want to see how crooked
something is, you hold up something perfectly straight beside it
and you will see how crooked it is. If you want to measure
something, then you measure it according to the rule. And if
I measure something and I say this The pulpit that Cole made
is 700mm long and I measure it according to my measuring tape
and it says 700mm long and someone else comes along and they've
got another measuring tape and it says that it's 500mm long.
Someone has a very serious problem. We do have, according to what
we have read in all of Galatians, we do have at the end of Galatians
Paul has laid out the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. with
such clarity that he's measured it perfectly and according to
that measurement of the Gospel he has shown all the falsehoods
that are pervading this religious world today. And they're all
measured against this measuring line, isn't it? The Scriptures,
of course, are our measure. The Scriptures are just simply
the Word of God. This is God's Word. And it's
not up to my opinion. Your opinion and my opinion makes
absolutely no difference to God's measure of things. He's not interested
in our opinion. My opinion doesn't matter a squirt. It's God. The truth of the scriptures,
the truth of the scriptures regarding the Lord Jesus Christ and him
crucified, the truth of the scriptures regarding man and his fall, man
and his self-righteousness, man and his religion, man and his
supposed law creeping. It is the scriptures that we
go to all the time. It is the only place. It is the
place where the measuring is done. It is the gold standard,
as it were. And therefore, even the Lord
Jesus Christ, when He was doing battle with the devil, what did
He say? Again and again, what did He
say? You say, but God says. It is written. It is written.
It is written. Paul says the same thing in Galatians
4.20. He says, nevertheless, what saith
the scripture? That's the only question. What
does God say about it? What does God say about his measuring
line? What does God say about this
gospel? Paul is writing scripture. These
are not just the words of a man who was upset about what was
happening in Galatia. These are the words of God to
that Galatian church. And so the very first thing that
will be part of walking according to that rule is that these people
will be in line with the fact that the scriptures, the scriptures
are what counts, not the opinions of men. When it comes, as we saw in Genesis
32, when it comes to matters of your eternal soul, we ought
to be so thankful for all of those trials that our brother
Paul went through. all of them being held before
the public on display, to be laughed at, to be mocked, to
be beaten, to suffer all of the trials that Paul suffered as
he thought and prayed about these Galatian believers, all of the
struggles, all of the burdens that we have and we'll look at
next week, all of that, so that we will have this measuring rod. Let's go back to the verses prior
to it and let's just see and see what it is. What is this
canon? What is this measuring? What
is it to be in this line, lined up here? I don't know about you,
when I was at school and I found myself somehow in the wrong line
or the wrong place or in trouble, as a little kid I was just terrified
and I couldn't wait to get back in line. Here, here is the measuring. Verse 14. He speaks in the previous
verses about what religion is, isn't it? They desire, in verse
12, to make affairs show of the flesh, and then they constrain
people. Religion has to be herding people
all the time and getting them to behave in certain ways. They've
got to try and get these people to look like Christians. again
and again and again. They're constraining. But their
constraining and their fair share on the flesh is actually a desire
to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ. And they're
hypocrites, he says in verse 13. They don't keep the law.
They don't keep the law. They have never kept the law.
Every person who comes to you and says, we need to go back
under the law as a believer's rule of life, they are lying
to you. God says they're hypocrites,
every single one of them. It doesn't matter how nice they
are, how many good deeds they do, just read what God says. They don't keep it. They desire
to have you circumcised that they may glory in your flesh. And now he gives this measuring
rod, this measuring rod by which you can see whether you're in
line. But God forbid, may it never
be, may Paul never be found, may all of his brethren never
be found glorying in anything save in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto
the world. We see in this verse just another
of the many, many simple declarations of the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ on behalf of his people. It is the work of Christ for
you. You can read some excellent articles
in our bulletin. The Lord Jesus Christ in verse
4 of chapter 1, He gave Himself for our sins, in the place of
our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world
according to the will of God our Father. Paul gloried in the
cross. He found his confidence and his
rest and his boasting in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Where? Where do you have your
confidence? You can so often find it, not
that I go searching for it, but you can find it in what people
are holding on to. If they're holding on to something
and it's removed from them, if they're holding on to their righteousness,
And you speak from the scriptures and say that their righteousnesses,
even their righteousnesses which men applaud, are just filthy
rags before God. If you tell them, as Galatians
6.3 says, if a man thinks himself to be something, that's a great
description of the human race, isn't it? We think ourselves
to be something. What does God say of us? When
he is nothing. When he is nothing. Nothing,
nothing in righteousness, nothing in esteem, nothing in words,
nothing in worth, just nothing. As I said when we spoke on that
verse, nothings can be filled with something that has value. But like Jacob, like Jacob, when
the Israel of God receive mercy from God and find peace with
God, they will find themselves as Jacob did. You think of Jacob's
situation. Jacob couldn't go back to his
father-in-law. They'd stolen from him. And he
didn't want him there, and he didn't want to be there. And
in front of him is Esau, who had sworn to kill him. There he is. He can't go back. He can't go forward. And God
meets with him. And he wrestles with God. And
he has his name changed. And he has that remarkable experience
of meeting God face to face and having his life preserved. And
Jacob for the rest of his days walked with a limp. Jacob never
again walked with the boldness that he had before and yet now
as a new creation he walks with a limp and he walks with the
peace of God. What a remarkable thing, to meet
God as a Jacob. Jacob means deceiver. It means
supplanter. It means shifty one, cunning
one, crafty one. What a name to give your child.
You wonder what his father was thinking when he named him. Well,
God named him, brothers and sisters. God named him. And God changed
his name. And it's the work of Christ for
you. God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross of the
Lord Jesus Christ is where our God reveals himself. That's where
he makes himself known. If you want to know what God
is like, you want to know the character of God, you must go
to the cross to see God in all of his glory. If you want to
see the holiness of God, you go to the cross and see what
holiness does when holiness meets sin. That's why Jacob said this
is peace and this is mercy. If you want to see the justice
of God, you go to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then
you see that God is a just God and a saviour. If you want to
see the love of God, You go to the cross. You want to see the
sovereignty of God. You go to the cross. Any time
you're thinking about the character of God, take it back to the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ and there you'll see the true character
of the God that you will meet face to face. God forbid, may
it never be, that I would find any confidence in anything outside
of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, that I wouldn't boast.
I wouldn't boast in anything that I've ever done. I wouldn't
want to talk to people about my religious achievements, my
good works, my good morality, anything about myself at all. I simply boast and I simply have
my confidence. in the work of Him." And I love
what he says, doesn't he? He gives the Lord Jesus as they
do almost exclusively in the New Testament. In the Gospels,
describing the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, He's often
called Jesus. As soon as He's resurrected,
you will not find a reference in the New Testament to Him other
than with His titles, unless it's a reference to Him in His
days of His incarnation. He has earned His titles. They are His. Lord Jesus Christ. He is the sovereign God of this
universe. He is Lord. He's Lord of creation. He's Lord of all humanity. He's
Lord of providence. He is Lord and He is Jesus. He is the man of Nazareth. He was God in human flesh and
He is the Christ of God. and to rest and to boast and
to have confidence in Him, you must, as a child of God, find
that all the promises of God are yes and amen in Him. He really did come to do everything
that was promised of Him. He really did fulfil every single
scripture, every single promise. He really is the Christ of God
who is a husband to his bride. He really is the substitutionary
sacrifice. He really did take away the sins
of his people and he put them away forever and they will never
be found again. He really is the Christ of God. God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world
is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. The world is a crucified
thing to me. It is hanging on a cross, destined
to die. Its destiny, it has no future. outside the providence of God,
brothers and sisters. It has, this creation, the elements
will melt in the heat. It is nice, and we ought to be
thankful for the provision that God has given us here materially,
that if we are resting and we are finding confidence in those
things that are made out of bits of wood and bits of tin, then
they will melt in the heat. God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross." That's according to the rule, isn't it? That's
the way the people walk. That's being in line, isn't it? That's one of the marks of being
in that line. It's the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ on behalf of His people, His work for His people. Verse
15, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,
nor uncircumcision, but a new creature, a new creation. And so he's talked about the
work of Christ for you and now he talks about the work of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the lives of his people. Circumcision represents
anything that you might contemplate that you could ever possibly
do to earn God's favour, or to keep yourself in God's favour. Circumcision, of course, is a
ceremony that was done when the children were eight days old,
but it was an introduction into the keeping of the law. where you sought under the delusion
of the false teachers, you sought somehow. to extract a blessing
from God because of your activities. It means nothing. It avails nothing. See what it says? This is being
in line. This is the measuring rod. It
avails absolutely nothing. The law keeping of those who
say they keep the law, firstly in verse 13 they are actually,
verse 13, they are hypocrites. And now, he says here in 15,
they actually achieve absolutely nothing. A complete waste of
time. It avails nothing, nor uncircumcision. Nor uncircumcision. nor any works
outside of that. It avails nothing. People might
say, well I hold on to all the doctrines of grace and I believe
these particular things. It avails nothing. The only thing
that avails The only thing that avails, at the end of that verse,
is a new creature, a new creation. It's the only thing that matters
is a new creation. This is walking according to
the rules. This is God's measuring rod. This is the measuring rod that
He has left for us, the new creature, the new creation. As we saw when
we looked at this just recently, the new creation and the old
creation are meant to show us pictures of how God works in
the lives of His people. Where were you Sam when God made
the universe? We weren't there, brothers and
sisters. How did he do it? Did he have some really, really
good, cool things to work with? He had absolutely nothing to
work with. He creates how? How did he create
it? By working really hard? He creates
it by speaking. That's how he creates the new
creation. He creates it by speaking. Speaking, as we saw out of Acts
10, speaking through the lips of a frail and fickle sinner
who's nothing in himself and no better than anyone else. Just
a frail, fickle sinner. That's how God speaks. He speaks
His Word. He speaks His Word to the hearts
of His people. And what happens to creation
when God speaks? It doesn't sit there and say,
I'm going to argue with you. All those hundreds of billions
of stars out there, they just existed. He says, let there be
light and light existed. I was talking to a fellow yesterday,
the more we understand about the creation, the more complicated
it is. And then, again and again, they
have to sort of throw out a whole bunch of theories. They build
up their little sandcastles of all these sort of theories, and
they've just discovered somewhere in the galaxies, there's this
huge mass of galaxies, and they're surrounded by intensely cold
air at minus 200 degrees Celsius, and in the midst of that intensely
cold air, stars are being gathered together and formed. And the
guy, the scientist who put us out in the media said, well now
we have to start again with a whole bunch of our theory because it
didn't work. The more we understand about
God's creation, the more complicated it is. And He has designed it
such that His people, His people will see in it something of His
glory. A new creature, a new creature,
a new creature lives in new ways. A new creature has new life. Is that something that you have
measured? Is it something that is, according
to Paul, It is a rule, isn't it? It's according to this canon. It's standing in line with this.
You have new, don't you? You have so many things new.
All things are new according to 2 Corinthians 5.17. We have the mind of Christ. We
have a new knowledge of God. We have a new knowledge of ourselves. We have a new knowledge of how
God saves. We really did believe, didn't
we? We really did believe that God saves us on the basis of
us being good. And all I have to do is just
manufacture a bit more goodness. And I walk down this path of
doing a little bit more, a little bit more, and I stumble and fall,
and I get myself a little bit busier, and I walk and walk and
get busier. We have a new knowledge of God's
salvation because we have a new knowledge. New creatures have
new knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. They see Him in glory
that they have never seen before. And He gets all the glory. They
have new affections, don't they? We love God's way of saving people. And we love God's character. We love the fact that He's holy.
We love the fact that He's just. We love the fact that the Lord
Jesus has perfectly honoured the law of God. We love the fact
that everything that God looks to from me, He now sees in the
Lord Jesus Christ and He has seen it that way forever. We love the fact that when God
speaks, He creates. We love the fact that when God
declares that His children are righteous and perfect and holy,
He's not playing games with words. He doesn't have to play games
with words. That is exactly what we are. He doesn't. We have a
new knowledge of Him. We have a new knowledge of ourselves.
We see ourselves with something of the clarity that we had never
seen before. Paul saw himself. on that Damascus
road, riding on that horse, as proud as he could be, he saw
himself as a righteous and religious and honourable man. And if you'd
asked Paul, or almost anyone else in Jerusalem, whether Paul's
on his way to heaven, they would have said, absolutely, Paul is
on the inside track. And Paul met God face to face,
and his life was preserved. and his life was radically transformed. He took his proper place in the
dust. He took his proper place at the
feet of the Lord Jesus, and he was absolutely sovereign in all
of it, and Paul loves it that way. As we saw a couple of weeks
ago, we have new eyes to see things, we have new ears to hear
the Gospel. We have a new way, we smell the
sweet fragrance of Christ. We have a new perspective on
so many things. We have a new history. We have a history that now begins
before the foundation of the world. We have a history of us
being united to the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a history of
being God's gift to His Son. We have a history that goes back
a long, long way. My history started in the 50s,
but not really. My history went back thousands
of years. We have a new history of what
happened to us on the cross. We were one with Him. We were
crucified with Him. That's my history, that's my
real history. I have the righteousness of God,
the very righteousness of God, not the righteousness of men,
not the righteousness that can be seen by men, not the righteousness
that can be boasted by men. I have the very righteousness
of God and so does every believer. We are made, made, created by
God to be the righteousness of God. Do those things delight
you? Do you actually find yourself
happily finding a line there and staying in that line? New creatures, new creatures
do. New creations do. We have a new way of viewing
the law of God, don't we? You see, I love what Clay Curtis
said about the law of God. He says, I can jump over a barn. I can jump over a barn if you
let me build the barn. That's what religious people
are doing, aren't they? They build a set of standards and
always the standards are where they have jumped over or they
might jump over if they can just get themselves a little bit better.
God's standard is absolute, perfect, 100% holiness, 100% of your life. And He has done it all. You boast in the Lord Jesus Christ. Your circumcision avails nothing.
Your uncircumcision avails nothing. You're a new creature and in
Christ Jesus. It's in Christ Jesus. That's such a common term in
the New Testament that ought to be spoken of more and more.
Paul used it 160-something times in 12 books. You mathematicians
can work out how many. It's a very, very common description. It is the most common description
of believers in the New Testament. Circumcision. Anything I do to
please God. Uncircumcision. What avails with
God? A new creature, a new heart. That avails without God. And as many as walk according
to this rule. What a remarkable thing. As many
as walk according to this rule. This is the rule of the new creature
in the Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? This is where God's children
always line up and look what they have. As many as walk according
to this rule, peace be on them. What a remarkable thing that
word is, peace. Peace with God. Peace with His
person. Peace with His character. Peace with His word. Peace with
His provision, His providence. Peace with His purpose. Peace
with what He says about what I am in my Adam flesh. Peace
with God and His salvation. Peace with this world. It's crucified to me and I to
it. At peace with people, they can't
take from me what matters to me. My treasure's in another
place altogether, isn't it? Read 1 Peter 1. It's kept in
heaven for us. Peace with the brethren. I love how Paul continually describes
brethren, prescribes this many that walk according to this rule
as brethren. Brethren means that they are
of the same womb, of the same blood, born in the same way,
born by the same parents. They're brethren. The brethren
have peace, and it's a peace, if you look there closely, peace
be on them. It's not something that we work
up in ourselves. You and I, who have stumbled
and fallen into sins that are so gross that they need not be
spoken of in public, find where is peace. Where is peace? Our
peace is not found in anything that I find in myself. Our peace
is found in Him and what He has done. It's not something that's
worked up in a believer. It comes from above and it comes
on them. Peace on them. See, if your peace
can be taken away by men, it's not the peace of God that comes
on them. It's not the peace that's promised
in Isaiah 54, 7. No weapon that is formed against
thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against
thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants
of the Lord. Their righteousness is of me. That was the peace, wasn't it,
that Jacob felt as he walked away from that encounter. He
had met God face to face and he didn't say, I have preserved
my life. He said, my life has been preserved. The mercy of God, God being merciful
to our unrighteousnesses. and their sins will I remember
no more." Where do you get the ability to glory in the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ? Where do you get the understanding
that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision
avail anything? You get it from the mercy of
God. It's His mercy and His grace
And we love the fact that God says, I will be merciful to whom
I will be merciful. The Israel of God, we've spoken
a little bit about it. We might have to leave it as
the weather's getting the best of us. But the Israel of God,
the Israel of God are the children of God. They are and they come
to meet God face to face, like Jacob, and they go away saying,
I have seen Him and I am preserved. They are the new creation. They
are the new people of God. They limp through this world
like the Shulamite. They come up out of the wilderness,
leaning on the Beloved. Let's pray.