Virtually everyone is trying
to get to heaven, some sort of heaven. All people instinctively
know that there is a God, and they know that we'll face God
in judgment, and they know that our eternal
destiny will be determined by that judgment. Now there are
some, I suppose, who have convinced themselves that there is no God.
I don't know whether they've really convinced themselves or they just like to say that in
the hope that maybe they're right. I don't know. But I know that
nobody starts out as an atheist. And nobody believes that they're
good enough for God in the beginning. The only difference among people
on this matter, this matter of God, our conduct
and judgment to come, the only difference among people is what
they believe the standard of judgment will be and what they
must do in order to obtain a good outcome at the judgment. Now
the good outcome, you know, which is loosely described as heaven,
that's what everybody wants. The question is, how do you get
it? There are only two paths. Two
means by which people believe that at the judgment a person
can be declared worthy of God's blessings. And let me say this,
if in the eyes of God you are not worthy of His blessings,
you won't get them. Now that doesn't sound like anything
you've preached before. Well, hang on, you'll see what
I mean. God is a just God. He will condemn
the wicked and bless the righteous. Period. That's what he does. There are only two paths by which a person can be found
worthy to obtain the everlasting blessings of God. There is the
path of human effort. This path says that there is
a set of commands or qualifications which people must meet in order
to gain the blessing of God. Now, there are hundreds of versions
of this path, but it's all the same path. You know, the Lord
said, broad is the road that leads to destruction. Now it's
just one road, but there's lots of lanes on it. And seeing that man is by nature
religious, because God has written His law in the hearts of all
people, and that's why they know there's a God, that's why they
know that there's a judgment, and that's why they know they've
got to do something in order to make that judgment turn out
pleasantly. And there is this path of human
effort, this road of human effort, and there are almost as many
lanes on that road as there are people. I was in Lexington, Kentucky
one time, that's where Brother Todd Nyberg pastors a church,
and I was trying to find his house. And I kind of knew how
to get there, but wasn't sure. And I knew that I had to go down
Broadway. I can't remember whether it's
a drive or a street or whatever. So I'm driving down. There's this church, Broadway
Baptist. I said, somebody should have
thought about that before they named it. Because broad is the
way that leads to destruction. And I thought, I don't care if
I am on Broadway. I'm not naming my church Broadway.
But it wouldn't surprise me to find that that may be an apt
name for that church. I can't say that with any certainty.
I've never been there. Broad is the way. There's Hindu
lanes. There's atheist lanes. There's philosophical lanes.
There's Baptist lanes. Reformed lanes, Catholic lanes,
Lutheran lanes, put anything on there you want. Because every
denomination made by men has at least one version of it that
is this path of human effort. Even God has, shall we say, a
lane. Remember, the law is as much
from God as the gospel is. And God says, if you do these
things, you'll live by them. So there is a path to God's favor
based on human effort. I'm not saying you can successfully
walk it. I'm just saying there is one.
Let's not make the mistake of thinking there isn't such a path.
God says there is such a way, and the proof of it is that there
is one person who walked that path successfully. Who walked
the path of divine law with perfection, and in so doing, obtained the
favor of God and all the blessings that accrue to a righteous man. But there's been only one that's
done that so far. And despite all the efforts of
people to walk it, and people have spent their whole lives
endeavoring to walk it and have not been able to do it, despite
the fact that people say things like, Well, children need to
be taught to hate. They don't do that naturally. When people say that, I say,
OK, you go find me two kids and one toy, and we'll put them in
a room and find out whether they have to be taught how to hate.
It's in us. None of us can walk one of those
paths or that path successfully. Now, I'm missing a page. Well, I can't
remember what I was saying. Two paths. The other path is
the path which says that God simply forgives a person of their
sin. And through that forgiveness,
They are found worthy of God's eternal blessings. Now, the Gospel
of Christ, as it's revealed in the Scripture, is the only version
of that that works. Because there are some who will
say that God simply forgives sin, and that's how people get
into heaven. Well, they're missing some very important information
there. Because God really does not simply forgive sin. You see, all sin, every sin,
sin in the matter of transgressions, the things we do that are wrong,
sin that way, sin so far as our nature is concerned, all of that,
God is going to deal with it in judgment. No sin will go unpunished. You say, why? Because God is
a just God. And for Him to just simply say,
all right, you sinned, but I'll let you get away with it. Now, when I say God can't do
that, I don't mean His hands are tied. God can't because He
won't. It's not in His nature. God is
a just God. and he will not be gracious and
merciful at the expense of his justice. And so the idea that there is
this path by which, you know, you are simply forgiven. God
just says, we're not going to do anything about it. No, that's
not correct. God forgives, but God forgives
on a foundation of justice. God said, I will by no means
clear the guilty. Now, hear the fullness of that
statement. He didn't say, there's only one
way I'm going to clear the guilty. He said, there's no way I'm going
to clear the guilty. Then we're guilty. Aren't we? So, in salvation, in grace, God
can't merely do something about our eternal destiny. He can't
simply change us from being on our way to hell to being on our
way to heaven. So there's bigger issues at stake.
He doesn't. Our destiny is simply the result
of what we are. And that's what He's got to do
something about. We are guilty. If He is to save us, He must
do something about our guilt. That's why when the angel announced
what name the Lord Jesus would be given, it says, you will call
His name Jesus, for He will save His people, not from hell, save
them from their sin. Sin's the problem, guilt's the
problem. So if God is to bless us, and He will by no means clear
the guilty, He'll not let them go, He'll punish them, He will
not clear the guilty, If He's going to clear us, there's got
to be a way that we are made not guilty. Right? Well, that's what the Gospel
of Christ is. It is the means by which God makes the guilty
to be not guilty. And the simple mechanism of it
is substitution. Jesus Christ God in human flesh,
God the Son, the Son of God, He came, He walked that path
of human effort to obtain the blessing of God. He walked it,
He walked it right. And that qualified Him to be
the substitute for us who can't even get started right on that
path, much less walk the whole length of it. And it says, all
we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his
own way. And the Lord laid on him, not
the punishment of us all, the sin of all God's wandering
sheep. He laid that sin on Christ. We
just, that song we just sang, I love that. I mean, I like all
of it, but I mean that one. He took my sins and my sorrows. He made them His very own. He bore the burden to Calvary
and suffered and died alone. Now, our Lord, He never did anything wrong.
and seeing that death is the result of sin, how can it be
that He died if He never sinned? The simple reason is this. While
He never sinned, He bore sin. And so closely was that sin associated
with Him through the mouth of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. He called them His sins. You have bound my sins around
my neck, says the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah. You have sent your fire into
my bones. Now, if the Lord Jesus Christ
was not bearing sin, God would not have poured out His wrath
on Him. God doesn't punish the innocent
any more than He clears the guilty. But the Lord on that day, and
I say this with as much reverence as I'm capable of, and I think
you'll understand what I mean, but in the sight of God the Judge
of all, Jesus Christ was a sinner that day because He was bearing
the sins of us sinners who committed them. And so closely identified
was Christ with those sins. Paul kind of turns grammar on
its head and in 2 Corinthians 5.21 said God made Him to be
sin. It's as though God looks down. He didn't see a man. He
saw personified sin. And God reacted to the sin that
He saw the same way He always reacts to sin that He sees. And he visited on the Lord Jesus
Christ, whatever hell is. He did to the Lord Jesus whatever
it is that God does to those who come into his presence bearing
sin. Now, we would never call those
sins His sins. He did, but we won't. We'll say
it like the Apostle Peter did. He bore our sins in His body
on the tree, but the point is, He was bearing sin. And God punished the sins of
His wandering sheep in Christ. Therefore, Well, a thing can't be in two
places at once. If my sin was on Christ, it's
not on me. Is that so? It can't be on Christ
and on me at the same time. And if it was on Christ, and
God punished it there, He will never punish me, because when
He sees me, He does not see any sin. You see, my sins were taken away
from me before I ever did them. Christ bore my sin before I ever
committed it. And when He looks on me, it's
not my sin that He sees. What He sees is the righteousness
of that one of whom he said, this is my beloved son in whom
I'm well pleased. Now, I'll tell you this, if God,
as judge, were to look at me and take note of what I do, if
he were to scan my mind and heart and take note of the things that
I think and that I desire, He would never say, I'm well pleased. He couldn't. So if He does look at me and
say, I'm well pleased, it must be He's seen something other
than me, as I am. He sees the righteousness of
His Son, the Lord Jesus. I am clothed in it. I'm wrapped
up in it. when Jacob was going into his
father Isaac, because he wanted the blessing of the firstborn.
Well, if he went in there smelling like Jacob, he wouldn't
have got it. Now, Isaac, his eyes were not
very good, so sight wasn't the issue. But his mother, who was
a co-conspirator with him in stealing the blessing from Esau.
Esau was the firstborn. Jacob wants that blessing, and
he's got to go before the father to get it. And so Jacob's mother
says, here, put on, and she made him some arm covers that were
hairy, because Esau was a very hairy man. It says Jacob was
smooth. what I think is one of the more
humorous description of Esau and Jacob to give you an idea
of what kind of men they were. It said that Esau was a man of
the field and Jacob dwelt in the tent with the women. So he's
kind of a soft guy, you know. And so they make him where he
feels like Esau and put some of those clothes on him that
were Esau's. closed it. Esau wore when he
was out in the field hunting and took him some of that broth. Rachel cooked up some of the
broth that Esau, excuse me, Rebecca cooked up some of the broth like
Esau would cook and Esau cook it, take it into Isaac. Isaac
just loved it. So there goes Jacob. Jacob the cheat, Jacob
the scoundrel. Everything that you wouldn't
like in a man, that's what Jacob had. And what's he got? He's got Esau's skin. He's got
Esau's smell. And he's got Esau's soup. And he goes into Isaac and he
says, it's Esau, I'm here for the blessing. And Isaac says,
come here closer. And he pulls Jacob close to him,
he draws in a breath through his nostrils, he says, all the
voice is Jacob's, but the smell is Esau. Feels like Esau, smells like
Esau, the smell of the field. And Isaac blessed Jacob under
the name Esau. Folks, that's exactly what we
do. When we go into the presence of God, the Judge of all, we
don't go in as ourselves. We go in pleading the blood and
righteousness of Christ. By His grace, when we stand before
Him in that day, we're not going to be dressed in some robe that
we made. we are going to smell like Christ. What did Paul say about preaching
the gospel? He said, everywhere we go, we
are a sweet smelling savor, smell of Christ unto God. And we are accepted by God, not
by anything that we have done, but entirely because of what
Christ has done. We literally come to the Father
in the name of Christ and are accepted in Him. Now, that way of entry before God
is what was being attacked here in the city of Galatia. And the
things that Paul deals with here in this third chapter, first
five verses, it is the greatest danger that confronts any individual
believer or entire churches. And that is the entry of the
least bit of our righteousness into the scheme of obtaining
eternal blessings. Any of it. This is, well, you know, Spurgeon
said this, he said, discernment is not the ability discern between
what is right and what is wrong. It's the ability to discern between
what is right and what is almost right. Now when Paul came to the Galatians
and preached the gospel, what he preached to them was right. But there came some there after
him, and they introduced just a small amount of human effort
into the scheme by which we are to obtain the blessing of God,
just one thing. And in adding that one thing,
they came up with something that was almost right. Kind of like
that rich young ruler, I think it was, came to the Lord and
said, what must I do to obtain eternal life? But the Lord said
to him, you are not far from the kingdom of God. But you know
the bad thing about being not far from the kingdom of God?
If you're near the kingdom of God, you're totally out of it. I mean, you know, if you're near
the kingdom of God, You are no farther from hell than you were
at the beginning. And that's what these people had done. They
brought in something that seemed so very close to the gospel. And it seemed to be a relatively
minor issue. And it seemed to be reasonable. some Jewish legalists infiltrated
the church. They said, we're all for this
gospel of grace. We have seen the light. Salvation is by Christ and Christ
alone, but... Now if you ever hear anybody
say something like that, as soon as they say the word but, I won't
get crude, but get up and leave. Just leave. Because nothing good
can come after the word but when it's used like that. It is salvation
is entirely in Christ and Christ alone, period, full stop, add
nothing else. Because anything you add is going
to ruin what you just said. And that's what the book of Galatians
is about. They said, we believe this grace business. We're all
for it. We see the errors of our ways.
Salvation. You gotta have Christ to be saved. But you must be circumcised as
well. Which I suppose is a big deal. And
yet it's just a one time event. Once a person heals from it,
then, you know, the rest of his life, he's not bothered by the
whole situation. What I'm saying is, they were
not even calling for a big reformation. They were not saying, you've
got to straighten up your life. They were not saying, you know,
there's ten commandments there, and you've got to keep them.
They came up with one that may be painful to keep, but it wasn't
difficult. And Paul said, look with me,
at verse 2 of chapter 5, Mark my words, I, Paul, tell
you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, and he's not
simply talking about a physical procedure, he means if you allow
yourself to be circumcised as something that needs to be done
in order to make sure that you're saved. Notice what he says here. Christ will be of no value to
you at all. You know, the Lord Jesus Christ, He is not a water faucet that
you can turn on and go, I need a little Christ here, you know?
Or, well, I'm a real big sinner, I need a lot of Christ, or something
like that. Understand what I'm illustrating
here. He's like a light switch. It's on or it's off. And here's
the determining factor whether or not he is on or off with you. Is Christ all you have? If he's
all you have, then you have everything you need. But the moment that
you add something to Christ, Christ goes off. It doesn't diminish
Christ. It doesn't slow the flow of grace. It shuts it off entirely. Brother
Mahan used to say, God will meet you on any ground you want to
stand. But He's not going to meet you with one foot placed
in Christ, in grace, and another foot placed in your own works. You've got to choose the ground
you want to meet Him on. It's going to be one or the other.
And what these people were doing, you know, you'd say, well, Paul,
don't get all bent out of shape, you know. Yeah, you're right.
They're wrong in what they're saying. But you know, they say
some good things. They say some good things. And
at their church, they've got a good program for the kids,
you know, and we want to keep the kids in. We can just let
this one thing slide. Do you know how important Paul
thought this matter was? He said, if anyone comes to you
preaching a gospel or a message other than the one I preached
to you, let him be accursed. You know what he's saying there? He said, let such a one go to
hell. He's not just saying that as
a vulgarity. He's saying it as a reality. That's how serious
the issue is. Our greatest danger as individuals
and as a church is not that we will commit a sin. Friends, that's
going to happen. Even a notable one. I'm not trying
to minimize. Those things are bad. We don't
want to do them. They bring trouble on people
and upon the church. We know that that happens. But
nonetheless, our sin, in that sense of the word, will not bar
us from entry into the presence of God, faultless and full of
joy. You know what will? The introduction of any of our
goodness. Really, think of that. Paul was
not up in arms, as it were, about the Galatian church because they
were acting wickedly. They were acting what they thought
was righteously. They were trying to be extra
good. And that's what got Paul upset. And he says to them in
this portion we read, he addresses them as foolish Galatians. How
much more foolish can you get than to have everything for free, but then try to pay something
for it? Well, that's an insult to the
giver. It's an insult to him, you know, because anything you
give certainly ain't going to be worth what you got. It's an
insult to His grace, an insult to His goodness, and here's the
worst of it. Since everything that is given
to us is given to us on the basis of Christ, if we try to give
anything else in addition, we have said, Christ is not enough. What an insult. Oh, we're just
trying to be good. Well. He says, are you so foolish,
verse three, after beginning in the spirit, are you now trying
to maintain your goal? Or excuse me, attain your goal
by human effort. Now, that phrase attain your goal here recently,
we preached on a finished and complete. Our Lord
said, it is finished. And it's the same word being
used here. He's saying you started, you started in the spirit. Do you think you are going to
accomplish or finish or perfect your salvation then in the flesh?
Now, what does he mean by flesh and spirit? In making that distinction, Paul
distinguishes between what is natural and what is supernatural.
This contrast is manifested in many ways. One way it's manifested, natural
birth, the new birth. Natural birth, well it's natural.
It's one you got from your parents. And it won't do you any good.
Not in the sight of God. I don't care who your parents
are. I don't care if they are the Godliest people that ever
walked the earth. You being born from them is not
going to advance you in the sight of God. Natural birth. The Lord says
that which is born of the flesh is flesh. That's all it is. We
love our children. We delight in them. But we need
to be honest with ourselves and with them. The birth we gave
them. will not gain them the favor of God. It can't. Now the new birth, it's a supernatural
thing. That's something God does. That's
something God does without help. In fact, He does it without cooperation.
Because our Lord in describing it says, the wind blows where
it wills. You can't tell where it's coming from and you don't
know where it's going next. All you can do is see where it's
been and what it left behind. So it is with the Spirit of God.
But here's the one, and this is the one that'll get you in
trouble if you're a gospel teller, preacher. He's also distinguishing
between law and gospel. Now, how is that? See, we've
been told for so long that flesh is bad, spirit's good. So to say the law is fleshly,
it's of the flesh, we think to ourselves, well, you shouldn't
be saying that. How is the law fleshly? The law is fleshly in
that it deals, well, the first thing is, in that it addresses
fleshly people, natural people. Secondly, the law is fleshly
in that it depends upon natural fleshly people and what they
do. And here's the thing, anything
done in the flesh is going to be rejected by God. But the gospel,
the gospel is something spiritual. And what do we mean by that?
Well, first of all, The Gospel is spiritual in that it is contrary
to all the ways of thinking associated with the flesh. Now, people say
flesh, and we automatically think of carnal pleasures and all that
kind of stuff. No, the religious way of the
flesh is, if I'm good enough, God will bless me. Okay, I've
done some sins, I know that, but I'm trying my best, I'm doing
my best, and to make up for the failures I've had, I've been
down to church, and I pay my tithe, and I go to church every
Sunday, or I've been baptized, and we've got all these things,
That's the way the flesh thinks, and that's why most of the world,
no matter what label they put on religion, that's what most
of the world is doing. Here's what the Spirit says. Through
His supernatural teaching work, He says, everything has been
accomplished by Christ. Stop working. and rest. I can't be doing that. I mean,
yeah, I'd like to rest. That'd be real nice. And I'm
going to lay down most of my burdens. I understand that, you
know, but it's only right that I... It's
only right that you do what God says. Rest. And it's rest at
the beginning and rest for the whole trip. It's rest to get
started. And it's rest to finish. It is believe and trust in Christ
and what He has done at the beginning. It's the same thing at the very
end and every step between. Do you believe that? You might be thinking, well,
I sure wish that was true. Well, you can quit wishing. Start
believing. You say, yeah, but I just can't
see how God would do that. It doesn't matter whether or
not you can see how God... That's fleshly thinking. You're
trying to figure out God. You think that God, we think
that God is like us, and we'd never do something like that.
We may discount what someone has to pay, but they're going
to pay. God's the only one that saves sinners at His own expense. entirely. And the only ones he saves are
those who are willing for him to pay the entire bill. The Lord says, put your wallet
away. There's nothing in it I want. Well, I realize the bill is a
million dollars, but I do have a quarter in my pocket. You lay
that quarter down, the whole debt is yours. Leave him to pay, you have no
debt. And no matter what you do between
now and the time you stand before God, don't let anyone Tell you,
salvation's by grace. But you gotta... Tell them you said, well for
us it's just one word, but you gotta. Remember that from way
back yonder we had talked about all those but you gotta's that
people insert? Technically it's four words. Salvation is by God's grace in
Christ. Stop. Stop there and rest and
let no one entangle you in a yoke of bondage again.