Galatians 5 verse 10. Beautiful verse, a heavy verse,
a verse that divides humanity into two. A verse that weighs
heavily, I trust, on the hearts of all of the Lord's people and
the Lord's preachers especially. I've had one of those sleepless,
restless nights contemplating the weight of all of this, contemplating
the wonder of the Gospel that's enclosed in it. Paul says to
the Corinthians, these people who've been led astray by false
teachers, by wolves in sheep's clothing, by the people that
Peter was speaking about in 2 Peter 2, Despite all of the wiles of
Satan, despite all of the weakness of flesh, despite all of the
morality and the niceness and the cunning and the craftiness
and the genuineness, seeming genuineness of these teachers,
Paul had confidence. Isn't that lovely? I have confidence
in you." Paul's confidence is not in them and in their abilities. The next words are the only place
that God's servants have ever found confidence. He's confident
in you, and it says through the Lord. In fact, the word through
there is the word that's so commonly translated, in the Lord. It's a glorious description of
the Lord's people. He has confidence in you through
the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded, that you'll
be like-minded, you'll be same-minded, you will have the same mind that
Paul has. You'll have the mind of Christ
is one of the promises of the Gospel, isn't it? It's one of
the promises of the spiritual blessings, all of which are given
to us in Christ Jesus and given to us before the foundation of
the world. Here it is, isn't it? But he
that troubleth you shall bear his judgment whosoever he be. He shall bear his judgment. So I wanted to look at the judgment,
the judgment of these false teachers. First, and then I wanted to look
at the source of our confidence at the end of the message. It's amazing how much the Lord
can say in so few words. It's an extraordinary thing,
isn't it? That He will bear His judgment. He will bear his sins. Paul had spoken of these people
in the strongest terms in all of the Scriptures, in words that
people find shocking, and they ought to. But he says in chapter
1 verse 8, But though we or an angel from heaven preach any
other gospel unto you than which we have preached unto you, let
him be accursed. And just to make sure that people
got the import of it, Paul said, as we said before, so say I now
again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that
you have received, let him be accursed. Let him be anathema. Let him be cut off from God. Second Peter reminded us that that it's actually better. He
says at the end of 2 Peter 2, for it had been better for them,
if they had not to have known the way of righteousness, that
after we have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered
unto them. It's better. to have not heard the Gospel
than to hear the Gospel and not respond to it. You are responding
to it all of the time. But to turn from the Gospel.
Peter there spoke about Sodom and Gomorrah and the grievous
things that come upon Sodom and Gomorrah. And the Lord Jesus
said that there are people who are worse off than the people
of Sodom and Gomorrah. worse off than Sodom and Gomorrah
and the cities around them. He says to the unrepentant cities,
he says, Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For
if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in
Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth
and ashes. But I say unto you, it shall
be more tolerable for higher in sight and in the day of judgment
than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art
exalted unto heaven, shall be brought down to hell. For if
the mighty works which have been done in thee, had been done in
Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto
you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the
day of judgment than for thee." These people that have come to
trouble the Galatian people are in so many ways the descendants
of the Pharisees in Jerusalem. The Lord said to the Pharisees,
they came to him, he said, the Lord said, for judgment I have
come into this world that they which see might see, and they
which see might be made blind. And some of the Pharisees which
heard Him these words said unto him, Are we blind also? Jesus
said unto him, If you were blind you would have no sin. But now you say, We see. Therefore your sin remaineth."
It remains. In the previous chapter, in John
chapter 8, the Lord Jesus spoke of these people and He says to
them, As he taught in the temple, he
says, I'll go my way and you shall seek me and you shall die
in your sins. Whither I go, you cannot come. And he said, you are from beneath,
I am from above, you are of this world, I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you that
you shall die. in your sins, for if you believe
not that I am He, you shall die in your sins. The only possible
solution to not dying in your sins is to believe that He is
who He is, to believe. Faith looks away from self, looks
away from works, looks away from anything that we do and anything
that we have, and it simply looks to Him. It begins by looking
to Him, it continues by looking to Him, and God's people keep
looking to Him. You see, to turn your back for people to turn their back
on the Lord Jesus, and to turn their back on His Gospel, and
to bring another Gospel, is to turn from Him, because the Gospel
is the declaration of Him. It's Jesus Christ and Him crucified. One of the glories of salvation
is that he who is appointed the judge of all the world, the judge
of the quick and the dead, he's appointed to be the judge, and
yet he's called the friend of sinners, and he's married to
us. He bore the judgment the judgment
of God on all of his people and he bore it perfectly and he bore
it completely and he bore our sins away and God doesn't remember
them anymore because they don't exist, brothers and sisters.
They were put on him and he bore them away and no one can ever
find them again. But what a shocking contrast,
isn't it, for those who reject the Gospel. God says they die
in their sins. They die, as it were, surrounded
by their unbelief. They die, as it were, everywhere
they look they see their sins. Their sins of adultery, their
sins of deceit, their sins of covetousness, their sins of rejecting
Him. They die in their sins. And in
hell there is no repentance. And so sins go on. Sins go on in hell forever. There is only one. Thank God
there is one way of escape. There is one person of escape
from this, all of this. He is the son of man, isn't he?
He's been given the right to judge because He is the Son of
Man, John 5.24. And He will judge the world in
righteousness and minister true judgment unto the people. He will. He will say, To those
he saved, he'll say, come ye blessed of my father. Inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. He is appointed to be the judge. What a remarkable thing for believers,
isn't it? That the judge is our friend.
The Judge is married to us. The Judge loves us with an everlasting
love. What love, what love it was that
took our Saviour to the tree. See, the judgment of these troublers,
he that troubleth you. Paul, again, has probably an
individual in mind and he doesn't name him. He does name them in
other letters. The people of God are instructed
again and again to note those who oppose the Gospel. to note those who unsettle their
minds, to note those who would bring them into bondage, to note
those who would take them back to Moses, to note those who would
take away their peace and their joy and their comfort. It's only grace, it's only the
grace of God that brings joy and peace and comfort. Anyone
who has you looking to yourself and to your works, looking to
yourself and your worth, looking to yourself and your wisdom is
taking you away from Christ, whosoever he be. Martin Luther wrote, Christian
love, Christian charity often leads us to trusting men beyond
that which is honouring to Christ. False apostles in outward appearance
were good and devout men. It may be that the he spoken
of was someone of fame and influence even among the apostles. We must
be careful to differentiate between doctrine and life. Doctrine is
a piece of heaven. Life is a piece of earth. Life
is sin and error, uncleanness and misery, and love must forbear. must believe and hope and suffer
all things. Forgiveness of sins must be continuous
so that sin's error may not be defended or sustained. But with
doctrine there must be no error, no need of pardon. There can be no comparison between
doctrine and life. The least point of doctrine,
the least point of teaching about who the Lord Jesus is and how
he saves and what we are. The least point of doctrine is
of greater importance than heaven or earth. It is, in the letter to the Galatians,
Moses or Christ. It is the law or the gospel.
It is justification by works or justification by the righteousness
of Christ. To one, there is confusion and
distress. To the other, in the gospel,
there is peace. There is comfort and there is
rest. See, the gospel means good news,
brothers and sisters. And if it leaves us for something
to do, then it's the Gospel that pervades this world, which is
good advice. It tells you what He has done
and how you can acquire it to yourself if you respond again. They are shocking words, aren't
they? these damnable heresies, these pernicious errors as Paul
calls them. And he says their damnation doesn't
linger and it won't be long delayed and it slumbereth not. You see, when they have rejected
a sin-bearing and atoning Saviour, and His righteousness is a justifying
one, where do they go? When you sin under the law, you
have hope in the Gospel. You had hope that as the high
priest in Leviticus went in and on his breastplate, it's called
the breastplate of judgment, and the names of God's children
are written on the breastplate of judgment, and he goes in,
as it were, into judgment. He goes in with the sin, the
blood, for the sins of his own and for the sins of the people,
and he goes in and that priest Bearing that judgment on himself,
goes in and he goes to the very place of God. And he meets with
God on the mercy seat and on the basis of the Lord Jesus Christ,
he is accepted. And he comes out to bless the
people. So has the Lord Jesus blessed
his people as our great high priest. He bore our sins. He bore not only our sins, but
He bore the judgment of them. He's called the friend of sinners. He didn't come to call the righteous.
He didn't come to call those that had any righteousness of
their own, any good works of their own. He claimed to call
sinners, sinners to repentance. What strong language Paul has
used in this letter. What a remarkable thing to come
to that great day when before you, before all humanity, eternity
is laid out before you and you find, as these people were warned
of, Christ shall profit you nothing. Christ is become of no effect
unto you. Christ is dead in vain. If you seek any justification
or any righteousness by the law, then Christ is of no effect unto
you. They bring you into bondage and
they want to exclude you. The only solution. Paul knew
what it was like to be religious, to be zealous. He knew what it
was like to live as a clean person in the eyes of others. He knew
what it was like to be highly esteemed in the religious world.
And then he met the Lord Jesus Christ and all of what he thought
was to his profit is now but done. He chucks it all away in
the rubbish bin. His only hope is that I'm crucified
with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not
I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me and gave himself for me." What a gift. He has redeemed
us. from the curse of the law being
made a curse for us. It does us good to contemplate
the cross, doesn't it? It's a good, good place for Christians
to spend some time contemplating what happened on the cross. And
it's an especially good thing for Christians to contemplate
it in terms of the transaction between God the Father and God
the Son. It pleased the Father to crush
Him, says Isaiah 53. He became a curse. God made him
who knew no sin. He had no sin of his own, ever. He knew no sin. God made him
who knew no sin to be sin for us. The thing that was most repulsive
to the Lord Jesus in all the world, the thing which we cannot
contemplate because we drink iniquity like water, says the
scriptures of us. for the Lord Jesus to be made
sin. It broke his heart in the garden. It crushed him. It crushed him
to be made sin. The only possible hope for us,
and what a glorious hope it is, is that Lord Jesus bore our sins
personally in His own body on the cross. If you want to find
out, contemplate what hell is like, you need to go to the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He bore hell for us. Only He, who is both man and
God, can bear it. And He did, until He died. He redeemed us from the curse
of the law being made a curse for us. You see on the cross,
we see God's punishment of sin. We see God's holiness on display. We see His justice on display. We see all of His attributes.
What an extraordinary display of the absolute sovereignty of
God, the events leading up to the cross and following the cross,
where God as it were, had laid out before those people the events
of that week in the Old Testament Scriptures, and it was as if
they were reading the script of a play and determining what
would be done. And they followed the Word of
God with absolute perfect behaviour,
absolute wickedness, but absolutely perfectly. fulfilling what God
had written. We see the omnipotence of God. We see the justice of God. We see the love of God. We see grace and mercy. We see the power of God. Only someone who is God could
not only bear the sins, but bear the infinite wrath of God upon
them. And we see the wisdom of God,
what extraordinary wisdom it was. Who would ever have contemplated
to put together a scheme for the salvation of men, where God,
their Creator, dies in their place? and God their Creator
rises for their justification. To not have that Saviour is to
go to that place and to bear your judgment. What an extraordinary
thing, isn't it? He that troubleth you shall bear
his judgment. He'll bear his judgement forever
and ever and ever. It's given to the Lord Jesus
Christ to speak to us of hell more than anyone else
in all of the scriptures. It's if it is too serious and
sacred a matter even for God to leave in the hands of His
servants. And he tells a story in Luke
chapter 16, I'll just read it to you. And it's not, he's relaying,
I believe, the more I've studied it, he's relaying a real event. People often challenge Christians,
how can you know what happens in heaven and how can you know
what happens in hell? Because we've got someone who
bears witness to both of them. And there was a certain rich
man which was clothed in purple and fine linen and fed sumptuously
every day. And there was a certain beggar.
You see the beggar has a name. God's children have names. There
was a certain beggar named Lazarus which was laid at his gate full
of sores, and desiring to be fed with crumbs which fell from
the rich man's table, moreover the dogs came and licked his
sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried
by the angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man died also
and was buried, and in hell, He lifted up his eyes, being
in torment and seeing Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom,
and he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me. Send
Lazarus so he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool
my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said,
Son, remember, that thou in thy lifetime receivest thy good things,
and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted, and
thou art tormented." And besides all this, between us and you,
there is a great goal fixed. So that they which would pass
from hence to you cannot, neither can they pass to us that would
come from hence. Then he said, I pray thee therefore,
Father, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for
I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest also
they come into this place of torment. Abraham said unto him,
They have Moses and the prophets. let them hear them. And he said,
Nay, my father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead,
they will repent. Give them some remarkable evidence.
And he said unto them, If they hear not Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. No amount of evidence, which
is why so much apologetic ministry is so, so dishonouring to God. No amount of evidence. Not even the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus. What was the response of people
to the raising of Lazarus from the dead? You read about it in
John chapter 12. They try and find a way not only
to kill the Lord Jesus, but to kill Lazarus as well. Unbelief is extraordinarily irrational. And the response of men to the
Gospel proves again and again with such conclusiveness and
clarity what God says about the heart of man. It's deceitfully
wicked and beyond cure. Who can understand it? But in
light of that, Paul Here's an example of someone
who was one of those who was lost, lost as a goose in a snowstorm,
lost in his religion. And he speaks of one who was
an apostle who for a time was lost in his deceivableness. He speaks of an esteemed missionary,
Barnabas, who was lost for a time. Paul had reason and he writes
these wonderful words, he says, I have confidence, I'm confident
in you through the Lord, that you will be none otherwise minded."
So he's confident, isn't he? He's confident in the Lord. He's
confident not in them. He's confident through the Lord. He's confident in the Lord. He's
confident in so many ways. He didn't plan to go to the Galatians,
it was an infirmity of the flesh that took him to the Galatians.
It was a remarkable act of the sovereign providence of God to
take him there. And it was a remarkable act,
their response to him, their initial response was to treat
him as if he was an angel from heaven, to treat him as if he
was Jesus Christ himself. They turned to God from idols. The meeting with Him, Him being
sent to them, Him writing this letter to them, caused Him to have confidence,
confidence in the Lord. Galatians is a great reminder,
as I've said so often, of how messed up Christians can be. The scriptures again and again
show us what wayward creatures the servants and the children
of God are in this world. The religious people want to
say again and again, well no believer would ever do that.
There's no way in the world someone like that, Solomon, could ever
be saved. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines and it says they
turned his heart. We have throughout the scriptures
a list an extraordinary list of the frailty of human nature. In fact the frailty of all created
beings, no matter where you put them, you create a multitude
of angels and you put them in a place where obviously they
have communion with each other and communion with God. And Satan
turns and a third of them are swept out of that place and then
locked in chains of darkness until the day of the Lord Jesus. You have Adam created. What extraordinary privileges
Adam had. And he lived in the most remarkable
place and he lived in the most remarkable state. He walked with
God. in that garden. He walked with
the Lord Jesus Christ in that garden. He was given Eve as a
help mate suitable for him. And Adam in his perfect and upright
state could not keep one commandment. And here are these people going
to the Galatians not just wanting him to keep one but wanting them
to try and keep 600. Didn't I hear what the law said? Null witnesses the destruction
of that ancient world and he sighed in his first activity.
His first activity for himself off the ark is to plant a vineyard
and get drunk and embarrass himself. As we've seen, twice, twice he
let his wife go into effectively what was the king's harem to
save his own neck. Again and again, you just read
the story. You read the story of men in
this Bible and you realise that men, the best of men are men
at best. and how much, how much we are
utterly dependent upon the grace of God, the good favour of God. See Solomon felled in remarkable
ways and we have a record of it before there, but we have
also a record from God. You'll call his name Jedidiah. He's beloved of the Lord. That's
where Paul's confidence lay. The church in the early days
was just full of problems. People say, we want to go back
to the New Testament church. Which one would you want to go
back to, brothers and sisters? The Philippians have a couple
of women who are openly squabbling amongst each other. The Corinthians
are involved in things you wouldn't want to name in public. The whole
chapter of Romans is written about judging people and not
judging people. The Ephesians, according to the
Lord, have left their first love. The Colossians were involved
in being entangled in intelligent wisdom of this world. These Galatians
are troubled by false teachers, but he's confident. is confident
through the Lord." See that's the only place, brothers and
sisters, where we can have any confidence, isn't it? We are
confident in the Lord. We are confident that He who
has begun good work in you will carry it through, will finish
it, it says. will complete it until the day
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He'll perform it, he'll finish
it until the day of the Lord Jesus. If he's begun a good work,
when did he begin the good work? When did he begin? Ephesians
makes it so clear, doesn't it? When did he begin the work? He
began the work before the foundation of the world. And He's began
the work before the foundational world and it's in Him. Just listen
to the in-hymns. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places. I like that, all. Isn't that
a lovely word? Doesn't leave any spiritual blessing
out. You are getting them all, brothers
and sisters. All spiritual blessings in heavenly
places, where are they? They're in Christ. According
as He's chosen us, in Him, when? before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him
in love, having predestinated us under the adoption of children
by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will,
to the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made
us Accepted in the Beloved. That word accepted means graced. He has bestowed grace on us in
the Beloved. And it goes on and on and on.
In Him, in Him. in Him. We are accepted in Him. We are seated with Him. We are
raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. That's where the believers are
right now. That's our real home. That's our real place of sitting
and rest, in Him, in Him. And having abolished in His flesh
the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for
to make in himself of two one new man." So making peace. Making peace. It is his work
to make his people a suitable habitation of God by the Spirit. He lives in His people, therefore
they cannot be lost. In Him we have boldness and access,
because of Him, because of the in Him. You see, people are troubled
about the Day of Judgement and we ought to think with seriousness
and gravity about it. But Paul says, I mean, John says
in 1 John 4, 17, herein is our love made perfect, that we may
have boldness. The word is confidence in the
day of judgment. Confidence. And the reason is,
because as he is, as He is, so are we in this world. We are one with Him, brothers
and sisters. That's where Paul's confidence
is, isn't it? It's in the fact that God's children are so united
to the Lord Jesus that nothing ever is going to break that tie. Nothing can break that bond of
union, that bond of love. Paul is confident in the Lord
because he knows the character of God. He knows the character
of God, but he is faithful. In 1 Thessalonians, he says in
verse 24 of chapter 5, he says, Faithful is he that calleth you. You see, not only does he call,
but he does it. He will do it. He will see that
God's people stay to the end. He is true to his word. He's true to his character. He's always perfectly faithful. He's always perfectly completely
reliable. He can be relied upon because
he's reliable. You can't trust him too much. You can't lean too heavily on
him. He's faithful to his promises.
He's faithful to his character. He's faithful to his people.
He's always always holy, he's always just, he's always righteous,
he's always sovereign, he's always acting in faithful love and grace
to his people. He doesn't change. because He
has no need to change. Nothing in this creation causes
Him to change. That's what Malachi at the end
of the Old Testament finished with a declaration of who our
Lord is. He says, I change not. I am the Lord. I change not. And because of that you sons
of Jacob are not consumed. He changes not. He is eternally
the same. He cannot change. There is no
need for Him to change. Paul is expressing in this verse
the glorious doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. And it's wonderful to think,
isn't it, that it is God who makes us to persevere. See, Paul's
confidence is not in the Galatians, in any of you who have walked
with the Lord and stumbled and fallen and found yourself utterly
cast down at times. As the Sama says, though he stumble
he will not be utterly cast down. Why? For the Lord upholds him
with his hand. Hold me up and I shall be safe. It's dependent upon the character
of God. For those of you who have walked
long enough to know how much you stumble, You are, I trust,
like me, growing debtors to sovereign grace. That's what it is to grow
in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Growing
in grace is not growing more wise and more holy. It's growing
more dependent, isn't it? More in need of grace. To grow
in knowledge is to grow more and more in the knowledge of
His character and His person and His ways of dealing with
us. It's extraordinary how religion
inverts things, isn't it? The way we were taught and the
way we taught others was if you grow in grace you become more
holy, don't you? And you polish yourself in front
of men so you look more and more righteous and more and more esteemed.
That's just a complete denial of what grace is. Grace is dealing
with us on the basis of the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ and
nothing of ourselves. Grace doesn't expect anything
of us. God knows what we are. It's a glorious thing, isn't
it, to think that the work of God, as the scriptures say, whatever
He does, He does forever. And Hebrews tells us in chapter
4, the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
So what God determined at the foundation of the world is what
is unfolding now. And what God has determined and
covenanted in eternity is never ever going to be changed by the
circumstances of this world. All the circumstances of this
world will do is reveal that covenant work. So those born
of God, they shall and they must persevere. And Paul's confidence
is that they will return, they will repent, they will believe
again, they will just simply trust the Lord Jesus. God's children
begin in faith and they live in faith and they die in faith. The righteous shall hold on his
way. The Lord Jesus says, if you continue
in my word then you are my disciples indeed. And God's children continue,
as Paul says here, in the Lord and through the Lord. See those
ultimately that forsake Christ, in reality they never knew him. Those that depart from the Gospel
never knew the Gospel. Those that depart from the truth
never had a love for the truth. Those that fall from the doctrines
of grace never had a true experience of grace. Those that fell away
were never in the way. See, perseverance works in us
that we become, we are diligent on our part, that always we see
the cause and the source of it is the work of God in the lives
of His people. It's Christ holding on to us
that brings us to hold on to Him. It's Christ loving us that
causes us to continue loving Him. Believers persevere because
they are preserved, preserved in Christ. So there are two glorious
doctrines, aren't there? One is perseverance. Perseverance
is a believer continuing in faith. Preservation is God keeping his
people in faith. Perseverance is a believer holding
onto Christ by the hand of faith. Preservation is Christ holding
the believer by the hand of grace. He is the good shepherd. He's
a great shepherd of his sheep. He says, I give unto them eternal
life and they shall never perish. He gives them eternal life and
they will never The other thing that this verse says so clearly,
it's a reminder again, isn't it? I have confidence in you
through the Lord. If the Lord's at work in the
lives of people, that you'll be none otherwise minded. You'll be the same minded. God's
people see eye to eye. Why? not because they are clever or
wise or anything else. They are same-minded because
the scriptures say again and again, they shall be all taught
of God. I love how the Lord Jesus expressed
it in John 6.45, and you know the circumstances where a vast
multitude has followed Him because of the miracles that they've
seen, and He preaches a glorious, sovereign, saving Redeemer. He preaches the Gospel to them
and as they become more and more disturbed, He preaches more and
more of Himself to them until there are just 12 of them left. Where do you go? Jesus said to them, Peter has
those remarkable words, where else have we to go? You alone
have the words of eternal life. But in John 6.45, during that
discussion, He says in 644, no man can come to me except the
Father which has sent me draw him, and I will raise him up
at the last day. It is written in the prophets,
and they shall be all taught of God. They'll be all taught
of God, and what's God's teaching in the lives of His people? Every man therefore that has
heard and has learned of the Father, when God does the teaching,
what do they do? They come to Him. Coming to Him is believing on
Him. Coming to Him is looking to Him. Coming to Him is resting in Him. He's quoting Isaiah 54 verse
13, and he says in that verse, "...and all thy children shall
be taught of the Lord. And when the Lord does the teaching,
and great shall be the peace of thy children." They'll be taught of the Lord,
they'll come to the Lord, they will stand as witnesses to the
Lord. and they'll be standing as witnesses
to who He is and His work of grace in their lives. I love
when that first persecution came upon the early church and they
brought these fishermen from Galilee, these lowly fishermen
in from Galilee into the Sanhedrin. You can imagine what they looked
like, these fishermen, after hiding away for several days.
There they were brought into all of the finery, the pomp and
the pageantry of this place. But they saw They saw the boldness
of Peter and John. And what was their boldness about? There is salvation in none other.
No other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be
saved. Now when they saw the boldness
of Peter and John, they perceived that they were unlearned and
ignorant men. I love that description of us.
Unlearned and ignorant men. And they marveled. They marveled
at unlearned and ignorant men and took knowledge of them that
they had been with Jesus. They can have all the learning
in the world and they can have all the finery and the pageantry
in the world. One thing that matters, they've
been with Jesus. Taught of God. God's children
are same-minded. They're same-minded about God.
They don't have any debates and arguments about his character.
They love the fact that he's sovereign. They love the fact
that He knows everything about them all of the time. They love
the fact that He has all that wisdom and power. They love the
fact that He's a just God and a Saviour. They love His justice.
His justice is our claim before the courts of heaven. The debt
can't be in two places at the same time. The debts can't be
laid on the Lord Jesus and then laid on me. A just and holy God
must save, eternally save, all that rest and trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ. We love His character and we
love As much as it might grieve us, we love the truth about us. We don't dispute with God about
who we are and what we are. We are like-minded. We are like-minded
with what Moses said about the people prior to the flood. We
are like-minded about what Jeremiah said. We are like-minded about
what Isaiah said about people. We are like-minded about man
in his natural state. We are like-minded about man
in his religious best state. It's altogether vanity. We are like-minded especially
about the Lord Jesus. We are like-minded about who
He is. We are like-minded about what
happened on the cross. We are like-minded that salvation
is entirely of grace. and entirely devoid of any works
of mine ever." We love, we love what our Lord Jesus did in loving
us by bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. We don't
want to argue with people about what it was for him to be made
a curse or to be made sin. God's people just believe what
God says and they find their rest and their peace and their
comfort in the words of scripture. It just is true, brothers and
sisters. Gloriously true. Gloriously true. He gives eternal life. Judgment
has passed for the children of God. God will not be unjust and
judge His people a second time. They've been judged once. It's
done. It's finished. Someone bore our judgment. For those like these Galatians
who wanted to go back and try and put believers under a yoke
of bondage and under their own works. They will bear their judgment. And the Lord Jesus says that
those that follow them will bear their judgment. The blind lead
the blind and they both fall into the ditch. May God continue
to give us hearts that believe the Gospel. Continue to give
us hearts that look away from ourselves and look to Him. May
God raise us up to be a people who long to live to the praise
of the glory of His grace. Let's pray.