It's lovely to see you all here
this morning. If you turn in your Bibles to Galatians
Chapter 2, we'll continue our journey through this remarkable
book. The more I study it, the more
I love it, and the more I study it, the more I see in it. And
I'll just continue to pray that the Lord would open our eyes
that we may see marvellous things out of His Word, that we might
see the Lord Jesus, see something new of His glory, that He might
bring something afresh to our hearts from His Word for us. Galatians 2. Verse 15, We who
are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that
a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the
faith of Jesus Christ. Even we have believed in Jesus
Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not
by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall
no flesh be justified. But if, while we seek to be justified
by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore
Christ the minister of sin, God forbid, For if I build again
the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For through the law I am dead
to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with
Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth
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. I do not frustrate the grace
of God, for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ Let's pray. Our dear and gracious Heavenly
Father we pray that you would write these words on our hearts,
you would open our minds to see how gloriously they portray our
Lord Jesus and how in Him being magnified your people find their
rest and their comfort and their security. Paul writes that he
might live unto God. Heavenly Father, may you make
that our prayer and our desire. be people, Heavenly Father, who
by Your grace live to the praise of His glory in this world. Now, Father, we commit ourselves
into Your hands. We thank You that we are reminded
by the circumstances of our life and by Your word of promise that
without Him, without our Lord Jesus, we can do nothing. We
thank you, Heavenly Father, that we come hungry and thirsty and
we come to be filled and come to be nourished by Him and by
Him alone. Thank you again, our Father,
for these glorious words that you caused your servant to write
this remarkable history, this remarkable declaration of the
wonderful finished work of your dear and precious Son. We praise
you, our Father. We commit ourselves into your
hands. In his precious name we pray. Amen. As I said earlier, there is just
that phrase, living unto God. Living unto God. What does it mean to be living
unto God? There are so many descriptions
in the book of God about what it is for Christians to live
unto Him. As Paul says in the Philippian
letter, he says, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Peter speaks of Christ being
magnified in my body. We live with him. To live is to be consciously
aware. isn't it? It's to be alive, it's
to see, it's to hear, it's to feel. It's living for Him, living
for His glory, for His name in this world, for His people, for
His gospel. It's seeing with the eyes of
faith through His word all the reality that we live in. This
world is messed up. The troubles are immense and
they are spreading in so many ways that cause us so much concern
for this world. But the only light we have on
it is the light of God's Word. To live under Him is to live
in light of Him in His true character. as absolutely sovereign, ruling
and reigning over absolutely everything. To live, living under God is
living under His authority, under His providence, under His care,
with joy and delight. It's living in confidence in
his promises. Abraham was strong in faith and
he gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God was able to
do all that he had promised. Living unto God is living with
peace. I know, says Paul, I know whom
I have believed. I know whom I have believed and
I am persuaded, I'm convinced that He is able to keep all that
I've committed unto Him. To live unto God is to have all
your eggs in one basket. To have no plan B, it's all Him. It's to live Living unto God
is to live at rest, knowing who you are, knowing whose you are. Living unto God is to be spiritually
minded, for to be calmly minded is death, but spiritually minded
is life. As we read in the psalm and as
Peter says in 1 Peter 2.24, he wants Christ to be magnified
in his body. Now some of these desires of
your heart, are they things that you long for, things that you
pray for? things that you look for God,
by grace, to provide for you. To live under God is to show
forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness
into His marvellous light. To live under God is to live
in belief of His Word. It's testimony of his characters,
it's testimony of his promises, his promises of blessing and
his promises of cursing, his promises of sovereign, providential
love and care for his people. It's testimony of who our Lord
Jesus Christ is, who He was in eternity, who He was promised
to be in time, who He was in time, who He was on the cross
and what He did on the cross, who He is now, right now. It's to believe, isn't it, in
our union with Him, which Paul goes on to talk about in these
verses. is to believe in His sovereign
rule of all things for the good of His own. He's working all
things for the good of His own. To live under God is to live
in light of His everlasting love for His own, His life for His
own, His death for His own, His burial for His own, His resurrection
for His own. To live under God is to have
the love of Christ, compelling and constraining. He leads His
own. He is the Good Shepherd. He's laid down His life for His
sheep. And in these verses, to live
unto God is to stand before a congregation that was divided, divided by
legalists, divided by those who look to the flesh and look to
the law of God for righteousness and for sanctification and for
justification. It's for those who look away
from Christ. to live under God for Paul in
this situation was to stand before that congregation and publicly
rebuke the Apostle Peter and the missionary Barnabas and tell
them that they were not walking straight according to the truth
of the Gospel, to tell these eminent men and all who joined
with them that they were hypocrites. is to not look at the faces of
men or be concerned about their response to what you say. To live on to God is what Paul
delights in. And in these verses, from 17
down to 19, we have another picture And it goes through to verse
21. He has another picture of what it is to really be a Christian. To really be a Christian. To really be indwelt by the Holy
Spirit. To be really justified as he
says there earlier, to be justified by the faith of Christ and not
by the works of the law, not by the energy of human activities. Our Adam flesh is continually
prey to us. being prone to think that a Christian
life is about doing and doing and doing. And Paul continually
reminds us it's about being and it's about believing. That doesn't
mean that doing won't happen. Ephesians 2.10 makes it abundantly
clear and Paul's experience here makes it abundantly clear. He
was not inactive. in any way whatsoever, but his
activity was motivated by Christ in him, the hope of glory, not
by some legalistic works righteousness that looks at the flesh of men
and looks at the flesh of men and sees it as either appealing
or sees it as a reason for condemning. I love the article in your bulletin
on justifying. I know our forebears wrote They wrote in some ways dense
writing, but always they wrote with a deep sense of seriousness
of the situation. The people in these days could
take you to the prison. where John Bunyan was locked
up and his family starving because he preached the Gospel. The people
in these days could take you to the places where relations
and people they knew of were burnt at the stake and religious
people preached sermons over them. They lived in a time of
great seriousness. They lived in a time where the
things of God were a matter of life and death. And we have moved
on in many ways from that sort of world, but the world that
we live in, which is characterised by so much wealth and comfort,
leads to a deceptive lethargy about the things of God. So these
guys write seriously, and they write amazingly. We've spoken
over this last several weeks about justifying, and in verse
17 Paul says, if I will seek to be justified by Christ. And Mr Rushton's excerpts here
remind us of what justification really is. And in defining these
terms, in defining terms like justification, defining terms
like propitiation, defining terms like the imputation and the imparting
of righteousness, God's children see what God really means by
these terms and they are a delight. See, justification, as I said,
is a judicial term. It is the verdict of the court
of God about a sinner. It is God's declaration of who
they are. As Mr Rushton says, justification
is a judicial term and it means acquittal from guilt. And he goes on to describe the
difference between what the courts of this land and the best that
man can do. The best that man can do is to
find someone guilty and pardon them. The Australian government
spent ages seeking clemency, seeking some sort of hope for
those two Australians who were on death row in Indonesia. And the President of Indonesia
had within his power the right to grant those men clemency and
to save their lives. He may have done so if he wished
to. But whatever he did would never
remove the fact that those men were guilty, guilty of a crime
of drug trafficking, and guilty of a crime worthy of death. As Mr Rushen goes on down there,
he says, pardon is merely an exemption from punishment, but
justification is freedom from its desert. If mercy be extended
to the criminal, he is pardoned. and no created power can justify
him. But what is impossible with man
is accomplished by our God. Wonder, O heavens! Be astonished,
O earth! Jehovah not only pardons, but
justifies the ungodly. He not only remits their punishment,
but removes their sins also. so that heaven, earth and hell
are challenged to bring one fault against the ransom of the Lord,
if they are able. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It's God that justifies, who
is he that condemns? He goes on to describe that justification
is the word that comes from weights and measures, that it means to
judge, to measure righteously, to measure perfectly. And he goes on down to the bottom
of that page, when Jehovah therefore is said to justify a man, he
does more than pardon him. And as his judgement is always
according to the truth, he never condemns the innocent, nor deals
with any as though they were righteous, who are not really
so. Nothing is more common amongst
men than to pardon offences, but the justification of an offender
is impossible. But the glory of Jehovah's character,
and this is what the Gospel is about, isn't it? This is what
the cross of the Lord Jesus is about. It's about the magnifying
of the character of God. It's about magnifying God's name,
and there's more than just some words on a piece of paper. His
name is all of His character. It's the glory of Jehovah's character
that He is a just God and the justifier of him that believeth
in Jesus. He transfers our sin, to the
Lord Jesus, the sin itself. And He obliterates not only the
effects of sin, but sin itself. He takes our sin away so that
in the court of God, in the courtroom of God, there are people here
now who have absolutely no charge that God can bring against them. As Jeremiah 50.20 says that on
that day, that great day of judgment, they'll search for the sins of
Israel and they will find them not. Who will go searching? Anyone. God himself can go searching
for the sins of Israel and they are not. My point in saying all of that
is that to mix anything of the works of man with all of what
I've just described is to deny what justification is. is to
deny that God is the justifier of His people, is to deny what
the Lord Jesus did on the cross. And that's why Paul, a forgiven,
pardoned sinner, a real sinner, a sinner who was a blasphemer,
and a violent man, and a murderer, and a persecutor of the Church,
a persecutor of God Himself. That's why to move Paul away from what the
Lord Jesus had done for him raises his ire. And it's with righteous
indignation that he speaks so strongly in this book and the
other books of the Bible. We've been looking at 2 Thessalonians.
And God sends a powerful delusion to those who do not love the
truth. And to love the truth is to love
He who is the truth. But as the scriptures say, those
who love the truth hate every false way. Because every false
way, every false way is an attack upon the character of our Redeemer. An attack upon the character
of He who is my And if Beth was walking down the
street tomorrow and someone said something nasty and untrue about
Norm, we would expect her to be righteously indignant. We
would expect it of her and we would be rejoicing when she did
it. We are the Church of God. We are as believers. The believers are the redeemed
of the Lord. We're married to him. Your maker and your redeemer
is your husband. Paul has a righteous indignation. He is troubled. He's troubled
about what these people are saying. He's troubled about the fact
that these people have an apparent zeal for God, a zeal that causes
them to leave Jerusalem and travel over land and sea and go to places
like Turkey and go to places like Antioch. They travel miles
They are zealous and they have a zeal which is ignorant. A zeal
which is ignorant of the character of God and a zeal which is ignorant
of the character of man. Such is the nature of religion
always. Cain was ignorant. of the character of God, Cain
was ignorant of his own character as well. Because the two go hand
in hand. Cain has been in hell for a long,
long time. Such is the seriousness of these
things. So let's go through these verses
from 17 down to 19 briefly and quickly and we'll just try and
spend a little bit of time at the end on what Paul means by
living unto God. As I've just explained, he's
talking about justification in verse 16, he's talking about
being justified here, and it has nothing to do, it can have
nothing to do with the activities of men. Those who are justified
are the recipients of a gift of sovereign and free grace.
And then he says, verse 17, But if, while we seek to be justified
by Christ, we ourselves are found sinners, is therefore Christ
the minister of sin? Those who are justified by Christ
find it something that motivates very much of their lives. And
there is a real hunger and thirst that God creates in His people,
a hunger and thirst after righteousness. a hunger and thirst that he alone
can fill through the Lord Jesus Christ. A hunger and thirst that's
been created by the fact that they've been made by God the
Holy Spirit to see that they have none of their own. So they
really do, they really do seek it. But if while we seek to be
justified by Christ, we ourselves are found sinners. We are found
out by others, is what it says. Found out by others and here
they are in this church in Antioch. To be found out, to be found
as sinners, if you go back to verse 15, he says, we who are
Jews by nature but not sinners of the Gentiles. As far as the
Jews were concerned, the Gentiles were sinners. It was the common
description of them that they were sinners. Sinners of the
Gentiles. If we are Well, we seek to be
justified by Christ. We ourselves are found sinners.
We ourselves are found living like Gentiles, believing like
Gentiles, justified like Gentiles. And here, who is going to find
it? Who is going to find them out?
Someone who looks to the flesh. Someone who looks to the activities
of what man does on the outside. And like all legalistic self-righteous
people, they always look, don't they? They always look at the
flesh of others and they look and they condemn. They look and that's all they look at.
They look at skin and they look at activities where found sinners. See, even the Jewish believers
were still zealous for the law, and they continually troubled
the Church when Peter came back with that remarkable news of
Cornelius and a multitude with Cornelius being saved. As soon
as Peter got back to Jerusalem, the very first words from the
Jews there, the Jewish believers there, is that they contended
with Peter. What on earth are you doing going
into the house of a Gentile? What are you dirty doing, making
yourself unclean and defiled by sitting at a table and eating
non-kosher food with them, enjoying some prawns down by the sea,
enjoying some pork with these Gentiles? Peter had been told
by God, when God declares something clean, don't you dare say it's
unclean. Don't you dare, when God declares
that he has purified the hearts of his people by faith, don't
you dare tell God that they are unclean. If we seek to be justified
by us, we are found sinners. Is therefore Christ a minister
of sin? Is Christ in His activities of
bringing the Jews and the Gentiles together to fellowship as one,
forgetting all the Jewish third laws and all of the other ceremonial
laws, all of which were a shadow? A shadow that's now been marvelously
taken away by the reality of the Lord Jesus. Is Christ promoting
sin in the eyes of these people? Are these people becoming licentious? That's the charge against the
Gospel all the time. You can read about it in Romans
4 and in Jude and in many, many other places. The charge against
the Gospel of free grace is if you just tell people that faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ justifies and the Lord Jesus Christ is
the sanctifier without turning to the law at all, in fact necessarily
turning away from the law, then these people will just become
wicked, won't they? That's what will happen. You
take away the constraints of the law and all you will have
is wickedness. People doing what they want to
do, unconstrained. That's the allegation, isn't
it? That's the allegation that is made today. That's the allegation
that has been made to us in this last few years by people who
want believers to have one eye fixed on the Lord Jesus and the
other eye fixed on the law. And what Galatians says is they
walk crookedly. They don't walk uprightly, so
not only are they walking crookedly and they're leaning over at the
same time, falling into ditches here and there and everywhere
else, entangled. Paul can't stand almost even
writing those words. Is Christ a minister of sin?
In fact he says, in the Greek he says, may it not happen. May no one ever accuse the Lord
Jesus of promoting sin in any way. God forbid. God forbid. May it not happen. Then he goes on in verse 18 to
say, And I want you to note that now, through to the end of this
chapter, the pronouns have changed. You see, he was talking in verse
15 to the Jews, he was saying, we of the Jews are not sinners,
we know, we know that a man is not justified by the works of
the law. And you can imagine the Jewish self-righteous legalists
in that congregation immediately saying, we actually don't know
that. Or Paul saying that you are not a believer then. You
cannot call yourself a believer. But here, as he does so often
in the Scriptures, he actually goes and describes his life with
God. his life unto God, his life before
God, and his life before men in personal pronoun terms. And it's strong, and the Holy
Spirit has led him to do it for a good, good purpose. See, Paul has described himself
as an Apostle of God, the Apostle of Christ, because Christ has
personally revealed himself to him and he has taught him the
Gospel. And it's a very simple matter
of what he's saying at the end of the day. You fellowship with
Paul and you fellowship with God. You do not fellowship with
Paul, you do not fellowship with God. End of story. You can read the same thing that
the Apostle John wrote in the opening verses of 1 John. And
so he describes, as he has done earlier throughout this letter,
he's describing his own personal experience. And here he is explaining
to these people what it would be for him to go back to any
sort of works righteousness at all. For if I build again, if
I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself, I
demonstrate myself a transgressor. I really do become a transgressor. If I build again, see the yeast
The yeast of works righteousness, the yeast of law-based righteousness,
it grows and it entangles and it binds and it blinds, and it's
always building. That's what yeast does. It grows
and grows and grows. It always builds self-righteousness. It always builds confidence in
the flesh. It never rests It always seeks
others to join with it. It's exactly what Peter and Barnabas
and these other men from James were doing. They were compelling,
constraining and compelling other people to join with them in their
work's righteousness. They think they see, but God
says they are blind. They think that by doing these
things they can grow in holiness, but really they're growing to
be greater sinners. As Paul says of the Jews in Romans
10, he says, they have a zeal of God, but not according to
knowledge. for being ignorant of God's righteousness,
going about to establish their own righteousness. They're ignorant
of the righteousness of God. Anyone who thinks that with these
hands you can do righteousness, that God is then under obligation
to reward you, If you think you can do righteousness, you have
no idea of the righteousness of God, and you have no idea
of what you are as a child of Adam. The Lord Jesus has some really
strong words to say about those who have come into contact with
the Gospel, come into contact and tasted something of the blessings
of the Gospel and then go back to work's righteousness. In Matthew
12, he talks about the man whose house is swept clean, Matthew
12, 42. How is it swept clean? The house
is swept clean by religion, isn't it? By a reformation of morality. rather than the regeneration
of the heart. It is easy for religion, it's
easy for organisations like Alcoholics Anonymous to get people to change
the outside and look as if they're swept clean. In verse 42, it
says, is it 42? It says, 43, sorry, Matthew 12,
43. When an unclean spirit has gone
out of a man, He walks through dry places, seeking rest, and
findeth none. Then he says, I will return unto
my house from whence I came out. And when he is come, he finds
it empty, swept, and garnished. that has food in it, fit for
them. Then he goes and takes with him
seven other spirits more wicked than himself and they enter in
and dwell there and the last state of that man is worse than
the first. Even so shall it also be unto
this wicked generation. Those that have had success,
seeming success, in holiness and righteousness by legalistic
means are worse off than the harlots and the publicans." Isn't
that a remarkable statement? The Lord Jesus says over and
over again, it's better to be drunk in the gutter than it is
to be in a church where you feel righteous and self-righteous
by your activities. Isn't that extraordinary? That
is said throughout the scriptures, brothers and sisters. 2 Thessalonians
2 talks about it as the deceivableness of unrighteousness. It's the
deceivableness of self-righteousness. It's the deceivableness of self-righteousness
done by the law. You see, you can build, can't
you? He says you can build, and people do. They build empires
on it. draw huge crowds to them. You can build. You see, what
he's saying here, and what is critical to say, is that there
is a personal responsibility. There is a personal responsibility. People are responsible. Because he says, for if I build
the things I destroyed, what did he destroy? He destroyed
all works righteousness. There he is, you read about in
Philippians 3, he had on this great credit side of his balance
sheet the most extraordinary record of breeding, of righteousness,
of zeal, and then he puts a great big line right through it and
says, done. And on the other side of the
ledger, he has Jesus Christ and nothing else. Nothing else. He's destroyed all those things.
If he builds them again, he makes himself a transgressor. So he makes himself a lawbreaker. And that's the remarkable thing,
isn't it? You can imagine Paul preaching
to a congregation, and there over in the corner are Peter
and Barnabas and the friends, the Jewish people, the legalistic
Jews that have come from Jerusalem. Over here in that church, at
a church gathering, are the Gentiles. They've been made to feel that
they're second-class citizens. because they aren't Jews and
they disobey some of these food rules of Moses. Makes himself
a law keeper. A law keeper makes himself a
law breaker. Those people that come to the
Lord Jesus on the last day, such is the deceptiveness of it, isn't
it? That you can go through all of this life, have this book
before you all that time, you can go through all of this life
and get to meet God, still feeling like you are confident. Confident. Matthew 7.23-22 Many will say
unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy
name, and in thy name cast out devils, and in thy name done
many wonderful works? Then will I profess unto them,
I never knew you. Depart from me ye that work iniquity. It says, the ones working lawlessness. And in the context of the scriptures,
it's the one working law. They come before God. They come
before God confident on the day of judgment and are cast into
hell. Oh, brothers and sisters, what
an amazing word we have at the end of 19. to live unto God,
to live unto God, to live unto God. But you can
imagine these people, as I heard Paul say those things, and then
add to it in this next verse, he makes himself a transgressor,
he makes himself a lawless one, he makes himself a lawbreaker,
and then he says, because, this is because, Because I, through
the law, am dead to the law. I, through the law, am dead to
the law. What a remarkable sentence. It
bears much more meditation and thought than we have time for
this morning. How is he through the law, dead
to the law? There are two ways I think we
can look at it, but I think in the context of Galatians immediately,
is that the law found our sin on the Saviour and found
us one with the Saviour." In the next words he says, I am
crucified with Christ. The Lord justly and righteously
found our sins on the Saviour because of His engagement, His
promise in eternity to be the surety for His people. And what did the law demand?
What does the law require when it finds sin? The law requires
death, and the law is unsatisfied until it has death. And it got a death. and it got
the death of my Saviour, and it got the death of all of those
who are in Him. And it has no more to say to
them. It has nothing more it can say. It demands death, it's received
death, And the situation is finished, isn't it? We are dead to the
law, brothers and sisters. I, through the law, am dead to
the law. Those who want to make the law
live again. make the law alive again, have
no idea of what it did to the Soviet, and have no idea of their
union with him. Isn't that wonderful? Dead to the law. For those who are alive to the
law, and make the law live for them, and live under it, and live to
obey it, and live to receive the blessings they think they'll
get from it. They are dead to God. Isn't that
remarkable? The false teachers completely
invert the purpose of God in giving the law. They turn the
law and grace completely upside down. You see, the false teachers,
that little group sitting over there that had enticed Peter
and had compelled others, they say, if you don't live to the
law, you are dead to God. They would say, if you want to
live unto God, you must live after the law. They would say,
do this and live. To be dead to the law is to be
alive to God. Romans 8 has a remarkable verse
in Romans 8, 6 says, For the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus. There is a law. There is another
law, isn't it? The law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. See the law is still spoken of
in the scriptures as having a force and having an ability. It says
it works wrath. The law was not made for the
righteous but it was made for the unrighteous. It still works
wrath. According to 2 Corinthians 3
it kills, it ministers death. In condemnation it blinds the
minds of people, it veils them, it puts a veil over their heart. And only by the sovereign grace
of the Lord Jesus Christ can people be brought to see, can be brought to see it is a
sovereign work of God to show us our Redeemer and show us ourselves
and show us what the law really is. To be dead to the law means
to be free from the law. To be dead to the law means to
be deaf to its accusations. It cannot accuse me if it's dead
to me. To be dead to the law It means
to be dead to its enticements, to its legal righteousness. To
be dead to the law is to be dead to its blessings. We have all
the spiritual blessings we can ever have in Christ Jesus and
we had them before the foundation of the world. None are missing
and none will be failed to be applied to God's people. We are
dead. to the law. It is just a nonsense,
isn't it, how simple the scriptures make it. He says in Romans 10.4,
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for all those
who believe. It means it is the terminus,
it is the end If I ask one of the children
here to walk to the end of the road, they will walk to the end
of the road, won't they? If I say to you, drive to the
top end of Junction Street, you will drive to the end of Junction
Street, and when it finishes, if you don't stop, you'll end
up in the river. It's the end. God makes it so
simple, doesn't he? And yet man, for the last, since
it came, in this last 2,000 years and now are raised up again and
again throughout the professing Christian world. People are putting
people back under covenants, back under law, back in a situation
where blessings can be received from God because you do things. We're dead to the law. Imagine
taking the whole book of the law up to the cemetery up here. And there you have those people
who have been dead and buried for a hundred years and you say,
I have just found out, you Joe Smith, in 1890 you lied and you
stole and you blasphemed God. What's going to happen? He's
dead. He's dead to the law. The Roman
Catholics used to dig up, dig up the bones of some of the people
that they had killed. They'd dig them up and they'd
have this religious ceremony over them and they'd curse the
bones and burn them. Where was the man? Where was
the Saint of God when all that was happening? He was dead, dead
to the law. To live unto the law is to die
unto God. To die unto the law is to live
unto God. We died unto the law through
the body of the Lord Jesus. The law can accuse, it can terrify,
It can kill, but it can never justify or save a sinner, ever. It was never designed by God
to do so. If we are dead to the law, the
law is dead to us. How can it do anything to help
your justification? How can it do anything to help
your sanctification? to live unto God. You cannot, according to this
verse and the rest of Galatians, you cannot live unto God. You cannot honour the Saviour
by any law, obedience at all, or any works of righteousness. What a glorious thing to live
unto God to live unto God. Do we live unto God? We live
quite simply by faith in the Saviour, don't we? You have it
in your bulletin, the list of all of the benefits of faith. Abel. Abel walked by God with
faith. Noah condemned the world by faith. Abraham by faith, not knowing
where he went. Faith was the rule of his journey. Moses by faith saw him who is
invisible. Faith looks to things that are
unseen. He that cometh to God must believe
that he is. and that He is the rewarder of
them that diligently seek Him. Faith is the means of coming
to Him. We have access by faith into
this grace wherein we stand. Faith is the rule of our approach
to God. The just shall live by his faith. living unto God. Is that the desire of your heart,
brothers and sisters? We live in this flesh, don't
we? We live in this world which seems to continually assault
us, continually. continually entice us into all
sorts of other things. We live in this flesh that does
nothing but sin. We have a life, we now live in
the flesh, Paul would say, but he lives that life by the faith
of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." You see, in this passage of scripture,
we have the stories of two men, don't we? We have the story of Paul. Paul was a law keeper, wasn't
he? When he was a law keeper, he
was a self-righteous man, a judgemental man, a violent man, a blasphemer. What changed Paul into a praying
man and a preaching man and a loving man? He met the Lord Jesus and
he lived unto God. was a sinner like us and frail
just like us. And he was completely forgiven,
wasn't he? He was completely forgiven of
the heinous crime of denying his Saviour before a servant
girl. And he was restored in the most
extraordinary way by his Saviour who loved him everlastingly.
and he restored him and he preached those amazing sermons in Acts
Chapter 2. He had that remarkable experience
with Cornelius in Acts Chapter 10. He had the Jerusalem Conference
in Acts Chapter 15. And he preached the Gospel powerfully
and wonderfully. And then Peter met the Lord. in the form of someone who was
very zealous and very nice and very religious and very righteous. And Peter, in an instant, like
the people in the Galatian church, Peter, in an instance of coming
under the law, all of a sudden, was walking crooked, was hypocritical,
was dividing the brethren, was compelling others to join with
him. He was not walking upright according
to the truth of the Gospel. He was compelling law-keeping. He was to be blamed. Those that sow to the flesh reap
corruptions. Look at the corruptions that
came into his life through one meeting and one joining with
legalistic self-righteous people. What a great mercy. What a great
mercy. The shepherd sends his under-shepherds
to guide his sheep back into his arms, back into his fold. that Peter might, with Paul,
live unto God. To live unto God. I love the
way Paul finished his life, he's finished his race, he's fought
the good fight, and now is reserved for him, that crown of righteousness,
but not only to him, but all who believe. And there he was,
someone who lived under God, and it didn't matter to him what
other people thought. At the end of his life, this
remarkable man, what a hero of the faith. for want of a better
word. What a remarkable man Paul was. You can hardly read 2nd Timothy
Chapter 4 without tears and feeling something of the tears of Timothy
as he read those words. And there he is at the end and
he says he was abandoned by everyone. He was abandoned by other people. And then he says, but this is
living under God. But the Lord stood with me. The Lord stood with me and strengthened
me. Living under God is having Him
living with you, living in you, and strengthening you, strengthening
you to stand. Stand in the liberty wherewith
Christ has made you free, and do not become entangled, brothers
and sisters. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven,
we come now to a moment when we reflect upon the death of
your dear and precious son. Heavenly Father, You alone, by
Your Spirit's work in our lives, can make His blood precious to
us, and make that broken body precious to us. Heavenly Father,
we pray that You'd continue to open our eyes to see something
of the eternal union of all of Your people, that you placed
in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we are one
with Him. We were one with Him when He
died, suffering all of the infinite, holy, righteous, legal judgment
that all of the sins of all of His people righteously deserved
and He bore them away to a place where they cannot be found ever
again and will not be brought to your remembrance ever again. Heavenly Father, what a remarkable
thing it was for your dear and precious Son to shed that blood,
to have that body broken for us. Oh, our Father, We pray that
you would work in our hearts, that we would find ourselves
just looking to Him, looking away from our flesh, being dead
to the law, just looking to Him, constrained by love for Him,
compelled by love for Him. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank
you. that our dear and precious Saviour
is the sanctifier of all those that are in Him. We are made
holy, unblameable, unreprovable in Your sight. There is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Heavenly Father,
we just thank You. We pray that You would cause
us to be thankful. You would cause us again and
again to look to Him with gratitude and look to Him with delight
and find Him delightfully embracing us, your children, as His dearly
loved bride. Our Father, make us to drink
and to eat worthily for Christ's sake. Amen.