Brethren, we're gonna be in Galatians
chapter three. Let's turn to Galatians three.
Let's ask the Lord to bless us this morning. Our great God and
our Father, we come before you now desperately needing to hear
a word from you. We pray Christ our prophet, priest,
and king would minister to us through your Holy Spirit Lord,
we ask you would clear our minds and our hearts now and make us
to focus, make us to behold our Lord Jesus, make us to behold
your grace and your power and all the salvation that you've
worked for your people so freely and abundantly. Make us, Lord,
to worship you from the heart. Make us, Lord, to repent of our
unbelief and our sins Truly cast all our care on you again today,
just like it's the first time we ever have. Forgive us, Lord,
our sins. Even as we try to preach and
hear the gospel, we ask you forgive us of our sins, Lord. Receive
us in Christ's righteousness and holiness alone. It's in his
name we ask it. Amen. Galatians 3. time ago, a couple of services
ago, we were in Colossians 3 and we saw that mortification of
the flesh is by hearing the gospel preached and by the power of
our Lord Jesus through the spirit working in the heart of his child,
renewing us inwardly and making us treat our old man as truly
dead, truly crucified in Christ. And it's through the gospel by
Christ working, same way we began in the faith. And that's what
we're gonna hear again this morning in Galatians 3. Verse 1, Paul
said, O foolish Galatians, who have bewitched you that ye should
not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently
set forth, crucified among you? That doesn't mean they actually
saw Christ crucified. Many saw Christ crucified and
it didn't do them any good. That's not what will save a man.
But it means that Paul preached the gospel so clearly to them
that it was just like Christ was crucified right there in
their midst. That's how we're to preach. We
can't make anybody believe, can't give the spirit, and cause anybody
to be alive and to believe the gospel, but we sure want to try
to preach as clearly as we can. And that's what he means. He
says now, verse two, this is only what I learned of you. Received
ye the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of
faith? Are you so foolish, having begun
in the spirit, are you now made perfect by the flesh? Have you
suffered so many things in vain, if it be yet in vain? He therefore
that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you,
doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for
righteousness. Now some think that the book
of Galatians is only dealing with the subject of justification,
through faith in Christ. They think that's because Paul
speaks of our justification through faith many times in this letter. But as we saw last time, the
problem in Galatia was that Judaizers came in and they said, it's okay
that you believe you're justified through faith in Christ, but
except you be circumcised and keep the law, you cannot be saved.
So the problem here really was with sanctification, not with
justification. Why then does Paul keep speaking
of justification through faith if the problem was sanctification?
Because anybody that believes they're sanctified by their works
or that they get more holy and more holy by their works, they
also believe they're justified by their works. They're wanting
to say you can't separate justification through faith and sanctification
through faith. Both are of Christ, both are
Christ, what he is and what he's done for his people, what he
does in his child, it's all of Christ. To be righteous is to
be innocent before God's law, to have fulfilled God's law and
perfect obedience. And to be holy is to have a pure
heart, holy, perfect before God. Christ fulfilled the law for
his people, obeyed the law, went to the cross, and laid down his
life for us, and justified us, and he did that from a perfectly
holy heart, trusting the Father, so that he's both our justification
and our sanctification. And then when he's formed in
you, in the new birth, there's a new holy man created, and Christ
is the holiness of that new man, and when he is your sanctification,
He makes you look away from yourself to him for both justification
and sanctification. It's all of Christ. It's all
of Christ. This message of teaching them
to go back to the law, Paul called it bewitching. Bewitching. That has to do with the eye.
The eyes turn from looking to Christ and turn to self. to their works, sometimes folks
look to their faith. I gave an illustration in the
Bulletin last week that faith is like a new pair of eyeglasses.
When you have those eyeglasses, you put them on, you don't even
look at the eyeglasses, you look through them and you can read
the chart on the wall and you're rejoicing that you can read.
That's what faith does. Faith looks to Christ and you
don't look to your faith. But you think about this, if
you start looking to your faith, you will be so cast down and
unbelieving because it's like eyeglasses. If you start trying
to look at your glasses, you can't see. If you take them off
and look at them, or you have them on and try to look at them,
either way, you're not using them the way they're meant to
be used and you can't see. Well, faith's the same way. We
don't look to our faith. We look to the object of faith,
Christ Jesus. And Paul says here in verse one,
they were not obeying the truth. Now you think about that. Most
people would think that if a professing believer was endeavoring to keep
the law and endeavoring to keep all the precepts of the New Testament,
that he is obeying the truth. But when you do that, looking
to that obedience and putting any confidence in that obedience,
you have completely ceased to obey the truth. Because the truth
is Christ. And when we turn from him to
ourselves and start looking at our works, we're no longer resting
in Christ to be our righteousness and our holiness. Christ said,
I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. There is no way to
the Father but through faith in Christ. There is no truth
to be preached but Christ the truth. Everything's fulfilled
in Christ and by Christ. And Christ is the life. Eternal
life's not a place. Heaven's not just a place and
resurrection's not just A doctrine and an event, Christ is the life. He's eternal life. So when we
turn to ourselves, we stop obeying Christ the truth. To obey the
truth is to submit to Christ in faith and walk by faith, looking
to him, trusting him. A sinner begins in the faith
by hearing of Christ's faithfulness. That's what's called here the
hearing of faith. That's our subject, the hearing
of faith. We began by hearing the gospel of Christ's faithfulness,
his person, his work, the gospel that gives him all the glory.
And we continue the very same way. Hearing of Christ's faithfulness. All right, first of all, how
did we begin? That's Paul's first question,
verse two. This only would I learn of you. Received ye the Spirit
by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? He's saying
received ye. That word there, some people
have preached that word as being you accept the Lord. You accepted
the Spirit. Listen, you were dead. We were
dead. There was no accepting about
it. We were dead. We could do just what a dead
man can do, nothing. To receive the Spirit is to be
given the Spirit. I poured water in this glass
this morning. That glass received the water. The glass didn't do a thing.
I just poured the water into it. That's what receiving the
Spirit is. It's the Spirit coming into you
without you even knowing what's going on. And as the Lord told
Nicodemus, the wind blows where it will. You can't hear the sound,
you can't tell where it's going, when it's coming, where it's
going, so's the Spirit of God. He's irresistible. When He enters
in His child, He's God Almighty. The Spirit's not an it, the Spirit's
a person, and He's God Almighty, and when He enters in, He's gonna
get the job done, and you're not gonna resist Him. He'll give
you life, and when He gives you life, that's when you believe
Christ. That's when you hear and see,
and a new man's created, Now the question, did you receive
this spirit through the hearing of the works of the law or through
the hearing of the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ? That's
the two messages that are being preached. One is the hearing
of works. That's what most people are hearing this morning, the
hearing of works, moral lessons, precepts, commandments. That's the hearing of works.
The hearing of faith is the hearing that declares Christ's faithfulness.
God's faithfulness in Christ. The three persons of the Godhead
in Christ. The faithfulness of God our Savior. That's the hearing of faith.
How he saves. How it's salvation is entirely
of the Lord. The hearing of faith is the message
that declares that Christ by himself purged the sins of his
people. that Christ by himself made his
people righteous, that Christ by himself made his people holy,
and as that message is preached, the spirit of our Lord enters
and gives life and faith to believe him and repentance to cease looking
to yourself and cease trusting in yourself and to believe him.
That's the hearing of faith. That's what he does through that
message. He sanctifies us inwardly through the spirit, through the
hearing of faith. He spoke of being sanctified
by faith that's in him. Peter spoke of your heart being
purified through faith. And it's by the Lord giving you
a new heart, a holy heart, and giving you faith to trust Christ.
See, sanctification is to be separate. And what men are doing
by trying to go to the law and keep the law, they're trying
to make themselves to be different from everybody else. They're
trying to separate themselves from others and show that they're
holier than others. Well, the true separation that
makes a sinner different from every other sinner in this world
is when Christ sanctifies you in heart and makes you trust
him alone. That's separate from every other
religion in the world, including those that preach Christ and
preach works. That's true separation. He's
the truth we preach. He made us righteous by his righteousness,
and he keeps us holy by his holiness. He's the sanctifier and the sanctification
of his people. That's how we began. Go back
with me to Galatians 2, when Peter All Peter did, he'd been
sitting with some Gentiles, he knew he was one with these Gentiles
in Christ, that it wasn't that him being a Jew didn't make him
better than them, and them being Gentiles didn't make them worse
than him. They were one in Christ, they
were both equally sinners, depraved, ruined, but now one and righteous
and holy in Christ. He knew that, but when James
came down, James was a Jew, and when James came down, they were
sitting there eating some pork. And when James comes walking
up with some other Jewish brethren, Peter got up from that table
and went over and just sat down at the table with the Jews. And
Paul knew what he was doing. The Spirit of God moved Paul.
He knew just what he was doing. Peter was saying, that the Jews
were just a little bit better because they were Jews. Just
a little bit better if they didn't eat pork, like the law said. And Paul told him, you've totally
left the gospel. You've left the gospel when you
did that. And he caused a dissembling of
the brethren. That means they began to be divided. God hates that. There's a few
things in scripture God hates, Anybody that causes brethren
to be at discord, God hates it. They disassembled because of
what Peter did. And so Paul confronted him and
he said in verse 15, we who are Jews by nature, Galatians 2.15,
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,
That word of means Christ's faithfulness. We're justified by Christ laying
down his life and justifying us. The faith of Christ, even
we have believed in Jesus Christ, that's faith he gave you to look
out of you to him and trust him. So we're justified by the faith
of Jesus Christ, so even we've 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 are also found sinners." And he's talking
about if while we're claiming we're justified by Christ, we
go back to the law and start saying we're a little bit better
because we're keeping the law or because we're keeping the
New Testament precepts. and we're a little better than
others because of that, or this is a necessity for us to do to
be saved, or any of these sinful notions that enter the heart,
he said, if we build that up again, he said, is therefore
Christ the minister of sin? Did Christ work that? Is that
sanctification? That's what he's saying. Is that
true sanctification? Did Christ work that in us? God
forbid. For if I build again the things
which I destroyed, I claimed I was free from the law, I claimed
I was justified by the faith of Christ, that's why I believed
in Christ, that I might be justified by the faith of Christ and not
by the works of the law. Now if I build back up again
that law and say, now, there's that little wall separating me
and them, that's the sin he's talking about. He said, I make
myself a transgressor. I have transgressed by doing
that. He's saying this doctrine of progressive sanctification,
this doctrine that you make yourself holy by your works, is sin. It's of the sinner, and it's
sin. That's what he's saying. For
I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto
God. How am I dead to the law? I'm
crucified with Christ. I was really in Christ. I really
died in Christ. My old man died and is dead and
is gone. Nevertheless, I live, yet not
I. See, I have a new man and I'm
alive, but I still have an old man of sin with me, so I can't
be trusted of myself to live and walk by faith myself. How
then am I gonna do that? How am I gonna continue sanctified
under Christ? 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. You
see, I'm justified by the faith of Christ, and I'm sanctified
by the faith of Christ, and I continue walking by the faith of Christ.
I don't frustrate the grace of God. When you start bringing
one precept back in that is necessary, you're frustrating the grace
of God. Paul said, Christ will profit you nothing. For if righteousness
come by the law, Christ is dead in vain. You see why Paul, this
was a serious matter. This is why Paul is saying, you're
not obeying the truth by going back to your works. No, no, no,
we're made righteous and holy by Christ. Christ in his high
priestly prayer said, Father, I sanctify myself that they also
might be sanctified through the truth. Christ is holy, he didn't
have to sanctify himself in that sense, but what he's saying is
he walked separately from sinners, he didn't come under the yoke
and bondage of the Pharisees, he was separated himself by himself
and obeyed God and went to the cross and laid down his life
to make us righteous and holy so that he would be the truth
we preach. and he's the truth we preach.
It's by the faithfulness of Christ. He said to those that were looking
for temporal, they were just seeing carnal things and looking
for carnal handouts, he said, this is the work of God. They
said, what works must we do that we might be saved? He said, this
is the work of God. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
whom he sent. Stop your working. You wanna
labor? The Hebrew writer said, you wanna
labor? Labor. to enter into his rest, labor
to stop working and stop trying to come to God by the works of
the law. That's just him being ironic. That's why I think Paul
wrote Hebrews, because that's kind of how he wrote. He made
a play on words all the time. All right, secondly, now, let's
go back here. How do we grow in this as a believer now? When we start out, we're babies.
We're just newborn babies. You know, a man could be, Like
my dad was 65, 67, something like that, before God saved him. He died at 76. He was just about
10 years old in the faith, like a 10 year old. So how do we grow? How is it
that we grow from being a baby and grow up? We grow in the grace
of our Lord Jesus, by his grace, and in the graces he gives us,
and we do by growing in the knowledge of Christ, by him teaching us
and by him teaching us more of him and what we are in him. That's how we grow. We're gonna
see that in the second hour. We're gonna get real personal
and real practical in the second hour and see how it is, what
he does, what he works. But look here now, verse three,
are you so foolish having begun in the spirit? Are you now made
perfect by the flesh? That word perfect there means
mature. Are you matured? Are you growing
by the flesh, by the works of the flesh? See, that verse tells
us that the problem at Galatia was what people preach and call
progressive sanctification, progressive holiness. progressively getting
holier and holier and holier by their works and their obedience. Look, Keziah has grown from a
little baby. She is still the same human being
she was when she was conceived in her mother's womb, when she
was born. She hadn't gotten more of a human
being. She just grew up as a human being.
conceived of incorruptible seed a new man is born in us that
is holy and and if if you only lived as long as the thief on
the cross and you hands and your feet were nailed to the cross
and you couldn't do one work whatsoever because you're born
of the Holy Spirit of the holy word of God, by the holy Lord
Jesus, you will have a new man that is holy and you have that
holiness without which no man shall enter into glory. And you
didn't do a thing to have it. But if you grow, if you do live
and you grow, you're just growing up in that new man. You're not
getting more holy. God made us meet to be partakers
of the inheritance in light with the saints when he gave us the
new birth. But these Judaizers, they weren't
denying justification by Christ through faith in Christ. That's
not what they came preaching. They were saying, that's okay,
but now except you be circumcised and keep the law, you can't be
saved. See, they were preaching progressive sanctification. And
this notion that sanctification's a co-effort between you and Christ,
when you're really sanctified, that's what he's gonna separate
you from. He's gonna separate you from that vain notion. And
he's gonna keep you knowing it's not of you because every now
and then he'll let you see what you are. And you'll fall flat
on your face in sin and realize if he don't keep me separated,
I won't stay separated. It's of him, it's not of me.
It's all of him. He said of his witnesses, I created
them for my glory. And if he's gonna get to glory,
it's got to all be of him. Growth in grace is by, we continue
the same way we began. Paul is saying here, we received
the spirit by hearing of Christ's faithfulness. That's how we're
gonna grow, is keep hearing about Christ's faithfulness. And Christ
blessing that word in your heart. And he works providence as well
to give you tests and to prove you. He's not giving you these
tests so that you can prove to him that you're a believer. He's giving you these tests to
prove to you that he's your only holiness and he's your only righteousness. And if you were left to yourself,
you're just a sinner and you would perish because of your
sin. He does this through the hearing
of his faithfulness. And who gets the glory? He does.
Look here now, verse five. He, he's talking about Christ
here. He, therefore, that ministereth
to you the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and worketh miracles among you.
Miracle like regeneration, miracle of faith, the miracle of repentance,
the miracle of of being merciful, the miracle of making you long-suffering,
the miracle of making you forbearing with one another. He that works
these miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the
law or by the hearing of faith? You see, it's Christ that works
it. He gets the glory. But how does he do it? Does he
take you to Calvary to make you justified and then take you back
to Mount Sinai to the law to make you holy? No. He keeps declaring
to you, he is all and in all. He's your righteousness and your
holiness. He keeps telling you that. Look here, how was it?
Verse six says, even as Abraham believed God and it was accounted
to him for righteousness. We're saved the same way Abraham
was. This is a powerful argument because those Judaizers, this
is just the spirit of God, the wisdom of Christ here making
Paul write this. These Judaizers boasted, we be
the children of Abraham. And so the Spirit moved Paul
to say, all right, how was Abraham made holy and righteous? He said here, he believed God,
he was through faith, and it was counted to him for righteousness.
Verse eight, the scripture foreseeing God would justify the heathen
through faith, justify some Gentiles through faith, Preached before
the gospel unto Abraham. That's how it was the gospel
of Christ. Saying in these shall all nations
be blessed. Look down at Galatians 3 verse
15. And this was powerful because
Abraham lived 430 years before God gave the Ten Commandments.
So the Ten Commandments did have a thing to do Him keeping the
Ten Commandments had nothing to do with him being righteous
or holy or growing in holiness, because it wasn't given. And
also, it was about 13 years before he gave the token called circumcision,
which was just a token. It was just a reminder of what
the Lord had done for him in his heart and a reminder of the
covenant God had made to him in Christ. Which it's not a covenant
that says, now if you do, God says I'll do. No, that's the
covenant of works. The covenant of grace is God
says I've done it all. My son has done it all. And we'll
do all and save you and you will be saved. Well, it was before
that circumcision was given and 430 years before the law was
given. Let's look here, Galatians 3.15, brethren, I speak after
the manner of men, though it be but a man's covenant, yet
if it be confirmed, no man disannulls or add thereto, you enter into
a contract with somebody and it's in writing, nobody's gonna
disannull it, it's done. The covenant's made. Well, now
to Abraham and his seed were the promises made, the covenant
promises were made. And he said not to seeds as of
many, but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ. The covenant's
really between God the Father and Christ his Son. He's the
seed, and he does it all, and he gives you and me, who are
his people, he gives us the reward freely. But look, this
I say, that the covenant that was confirmed before of God in
Christ, the law which was 430 years after, cannot disannul,
that it should make the promise of none effect. The law entering
didn't change God's promise of salvation through the grace of
God and through the righteousness and holiness of Christ. It didn't
change that at all. Look here, verse 18. For if the
inheritance be of the law, it's no more promise. You see, you
can't be saved by your works and still claim to be saved by
God's covenant grace. Both can't happen. They're two
different covenants. The law at Sinai is a covenant
of works. The gospel is a covenant of grace.
We either believe the gospel and don't believe we're saved
by our works or we believe we're saved by that covenant of works
and we don't believe the gospel. It can't be both. Wherefore then
serveth the law. It was added because of transgressions
till Christ the seed should come to whom the promise was made.
That's the proper use of the law. God gave you the law to
make you to know. When the law says you should
have no other god but him, don't bow down to any idols, that law
is given to make you and me know you are an idolater. When it
says you should not commit adultery, that law is given to teach you
that in your heart, without you committing the physical act,
you are an adulterer and an adulteress. That's what it's given for. It's
to declare us totally guilty before God But when Christ comes
through the hearing of faith, He saves you from under that
law and makes you to know He laid down His life and redeemed
you from that curse and made you righteous and holy in Him.
And He grows you. He keeps growing you. Keeps growing
you. He keeps growing you. Go back
over to Galatians 5. I want to show you one thing
here. This is what Paul meant when he said, We're led of the
spirit through this gospel. We keep walking after Christ
by him leading us through this gospel in spirit. This is what
he calls walking in the spirit. Look here, verse 15, Galatians
5, 15. If you bite and devour one another,
take heed that you be not consumed of one another. That's what's
gonna happen if you start looking to the law. It's gonna end up
in a feud between one another, accusing one another, and excusing,
that's all it is. That's all the law is, is accusing
and excusing. It either accuses you or excuses
you, and men will try to justify themselves using the law and
accuse others using the law, and they just bite and devour.
That's what works religion is. But, this I say then, walk in
the spirit, keep hearing Christ's faithfulness, keep going under
the gospels, hearing the gospel, looking to Christ above, depending
on Christ, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
You won't fulfill that lust to make yourself righteous and holy
by your works. And any other sinful lust, why
not? Look here, for the flesh lusts
against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. They're contrary
to one to the other, but the spirit of Christ makes it so
you can't do the things you would. In the context, that's what he's
saying here. In Romans 7, he said, because
of your old man, You can't be righteous like you would. But
here he's saying because of the spirit of Christ in you, you
can't sin like you would. He can keep you mortified, keep
you renewed in spirit, but if that's the case with you and
you're led of the spirit, you are not under the law. You're
not under the law. Go back now to Galatians 3. Here's the good news. This is
why that's good news. Verse 10, as many as are of the
works of the law are under the curse, for it's written, cursed
is everyone that continues not in all things written in the
book of the law to do them, but that no man's justified by the
law in the sight of God. It's evident that just shall
live by faith, and the law is not of faith. The man that doeth
them shall live in them. But Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. And look at verse
14. He did it that the blessing of
Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, that we
might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. And
look down at verse 25. After that faith has come, you're
no longer under a schoolmaster. You're not under that law now.
You're children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. As many of you
has been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ, there's neither
Jew nor Greek, There's neither bond nor free, there's neither
male nor female, you're all one in Christ Jesus, and if you be
Christ, then you can say you're Abraham's child. They were boasting
of that, and they weren't Abraham's true children, but you can say
you're Abraham's seed if you believe Christ. You're heirs
according to the promise. Let's go to him. Lord, we thank
you that you created this world and sent forth
your son to teach us your glory, who you are, how righteous and
holy you are, to make us see and know you in the face of our
Lord Jesus Christ. We're thankful, Lord, that you
who are spirit took flesh like us and by your gospel you have
made us who are flesh to have a new spirit like you. so that
you brought us together in one in the God-man. And Lord, we
pray that you keep us separated in Christ, keep us hearing the
gospel of your faithfulness, and don't let us turn back to
the law and to our works. Thank you for your mercy, Lord,
in Christ Jesus. In his name we pray, amen.