If you would, let's turn to Galatians
chapter 1 this morning. It's very easy for me to quickly
begin reading one of the epistles or one of the gospels and bounce
over the introduction, the salutations. We can't forget that every word
in Scripture is divinely ordained. It was given to those men to
write. And we may not grasp it, but it was given on purpose.
And the writers here were moved in such a way to write these
and the content that they did and the way that they did. And
just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it's not important,
but hopefully that time will come. Our text this morning will
be the first five verses of Galatians 1. We'll read it. Paul, an apostle,
not of men, neither by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father,
who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are
with me under the churches of Galatia. Grace be to you and
peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who
gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this
present evil world according to the will of God and our Father,
to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. And I've received
some very good advice from men that the Lord's made faithful
that I should pick a book and preach through it. And they said,
with that, there'll be some weeks where it'll be pretty easy on
you. You'll have an easy time and a message will come to you.
And there'll be some weeks it's going to be very hard. And you're
going to have to deal with some things that you may not want
to deal with. But it'll train you and teach you to lean on
the Lord for your messages. And I thought, that's really
good advice. And then as I lived it, I didn't realize that the
first introduction just a greetings and salutations there in Galatians
was going to be have some tough spots in it for me but that's
that's what came but I feel I feel like the Lord's led me to to
work through Galatians and I just didn't know the first little
bit would be so tough but uh and the title of this message
I have for you is grace to you and peace and that'd be uh be
easy for me to pick a title that could get a lot of downloads
if I was a youtuber or something to get people to look I My nature
thought, this is how believers are corrected. I'd probably get
a lot of downloads. Or, how we correct our brethren. That would get people really
excited. But catchy titles don't benefit men, women, souls. There's
no benefit there to you. The preaching of Christ and Him
crucified, that's where the benefit is. But here in our text, we're
going to see Hopefully put that in shoe leather, as Brother Don
says today. Have you ever done anything wrong
and needed to be corrected? Either when you're a small child,
or at work, or with a spouse, or anything with the law. You've done something wrong and
you need to be corrected. That doesn't feel good, does it? That'll never
go over too well, but after you've learned that lesson and after
you've been through that trial and you've seen it, you can look
back on it and say, that was needful, wasn't it? It don't
feel like it at the time, but whenever you look back on it,
you can see the benefit of it. As we read through this passage
here in Galatians, I want us to look at a few points concerning
how the Lord begins correcting His people. We're given a good
example here in the introduction of how Christ begins to deal
with these erring children. We see how pastors begin to deal
with those they're charged with in their congregation if they
need correction, those they're responsible for. But Paul writes
this letter to the Galatians because they were in serious
error. In this citation we have a very
good formula of how to begin to address our brethren if we
are brought to the point where we have to correct them. But
how's that? How are we shown that? We see
the pattern of how the Lord addresses us when He begins to correct
us. That's our pattern for how we
deal with our brethren. But some people may get excited
at the thoughts of rebuking someone else. Like, I'm going to learn
how to put the hammer on my brother or my sister. And I've heard
Don and Henry say this a lot. They've helped a lot of young
preachers fill pulpits and help a lot of small churches get started
that's grown. And they've seen a lot of people
more concerned about kicking people out of the church when
they're trying to start it than they are to get people to come
to the church. But that's just in our nature. That's the first
thing we latch to. But for those that are young
in Christ, or young folks anyway, I'd give them some good, solid
advice. Don't ever get on to anyone or
give any advice to anyone unless you're directly asked. Wait and
let the preaching of the Word do its work. Give that time. And in time, everyone involved
will be better off. If you've got questions about
the Gospel, sit in that pew, wait six months, maybe a year,
maybe a couple years. But there's a message given to
that man in the pulpit, it eventually will get to where you are and
you'll be ready to receive it when it comes. But, and getting
on to people immediately doesn't work too well, does it? We know
that. In front of my house, we got a little six acre plot there
in New Jersey. We think it's little. You all
probably think that's a massive, they think it's a farm there.
But I guess I'm the, I never paste it off. I'm the right distance
from a liquor store. And that's everybody, I mean,
for 200 yards or whatever in front of my house, there's nothing
but beer bottles and liquor bottles. And every week I could go out
there and pick everything up. I'm 10 maybe a week. And I got
so mad, I thought, I'm going to put a sign up. I mean, like
a sheet of plywood. Stop throwing liquor bottles
in my yard. Now, you grownups, how would
that work out for me? What would happen the next week?
I'd need two garbage cans to fill up, wouldn't I? That don't
work out. We know that, don't we? So when we get on there,
When the Lord gets on to us, we'll see how He does it. Whenever
a pastor has to correct a church member, or if you're with a brother
or sister and you're off by yourselves and up in the hills or whatever,
and you may not do that, we're going to see here how the Lord
deals with us. He'll teach us how to do that. Four points here. I want to see what was happening
and understand that the church of Galatia there, they needed
to be addressed. That error needed to be corrected.
Secondly, God's preachers, and in this case here in our text,
the Apostle Paul, is used to proclaim the word of the Lord
to them. And then thirdly, what he proclaims
to them is he tells them what Christ did. And then fourthly,
Christ receives all the glory. That's pretty simple, isn't it?
So firstly, those Galatians, they needed to be corrected.
Now Paul traveled through Galatia, it actually got They believe
he got sick there for a while and got stuck and he had to preach
to them what time he was there. But they received him. They received
his message and they were glad. They were tickled to death in
what he had. But now there's a problem a couple years later.
There were some Jews that started coming in there and they professed,
well, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth, that's the Christ.
We believe that he came. We believe he did all the work
for us and he saved us and redeemed us. But you have to be circumcised. they said well we believe that
you know this is the cross we believe he did everything for
us as the old testament declares but you have to observe the sabbath
or but you have to do this but you have to fill in the blank
and uh... that's what they were They were
working into those Galatians, but that was only in that time,
right? We've evolved past that. We've
got better than that now. No, that's what's happening today.
There's no difference. It's a little bit 11. It's not
something bold that's against it, but the error there in the
Galatia was they were giving ear to these people. Now, the
Jews preaching to them, telling them that, they were committing
heresy. But those that are listening and receiving that message and
saying, well, that's okay, and we'll take the good parts and
leave the bad parts, that's the error. They were erring, and
that needed to be corrected. But what's the difference between
that, an error and a heresy? And how can we tell, and when
can we tell? That's a tricky subject. But to err is to turn
from anything from Christ. But that can also be that sin
unto death. That's the heresy. So how do
we know if someone's turned from the cross and turned away from
the gospel, are they erring and they'll be corrected? Or is it
heresy and that's a sin unto death, they'll be taken from
the kingdom? You may not know until a deathbed. The Lord could
take someone, teach them the gospel, take them away from it,
turn them, take his hand off of them for 30, 40 years, and
then bring them right back. We don't know. So how do we treat
those brethren? that believe the gospel and then say they
don't or turn from it. You treat them as if they're
erring, don't you? Because we don't know. We don't know what
the Lord has in store. So we'll be ready for them in case the
Lord turns them back to us. But some members of the church,
they were in error for trusting in something other than Christ.
They're in Galatia. But the men causing these divisions,
the men preaching these heresies, they were mixing works and grace.
And that's against Christ. That's other than Christ. That's
anti-Christ. We hear that nowadays and we
flinch a little bit. That's what it is. It's against
it. But nothing's changed in this day. The devil tries to
swoon the Lord's people, men and women, away from the simplicity
of the gospel, the simplicity that's in Christ. Now, is it
an all-out removal? Do they say, well partly I guess
they do, that aliens came down and you have to buy two palm
trees and rub this stone. We saw a stone shop, we saw geodes
back home. The water gets into those limestone
rocks and it gets little crystals inside. They're really neat.
You cut them open and polish it. There's a store or nothing but those.
And it said this one helps you commune with angels. If I need
a rock to talk to the angels, I don't want to talk to them
anyway. I want to talk to the Lord, don't I? But Satan doesn't necessarily
go all out and say Christ wasn't real. He hasn't come yet. No,
he agrees with them just like these did. Well, he came, but
you have to say this prayer. You have to walk an aisle or
whatever. He takes you away from the law
and puts you right back under it. Paul is talking about here
in verse 6 when it says another gospel. It's either Christ or
it's not. It's one or another. That's it.
So in this world there is only two religions. I was about 14,
15 and I thought I was pretty smart. I took an anthropology
class and I can't remember the number but they said there were
822 or whatever, recognized religions of the world. I heard this and
I went home to my dad and I was like, I'm going to teach him
something. This old guy don't know much. So I said, Dad, you
know how many religions there are? I don't ask questions I
don't know the answer to, right? I didn't that day. And he said,
yeah, son, there's two. And I thought, this fool, he
didn't know anything, did he? I said, well, what are they?
He said, there's two religions. There's works and there's Christ.
He said, now you take any of it, you boil it down. It's Buddhists,
Catholic, Armenians. Calvinists, you bullet down,
do you do something or does Christ do something? And that's the
truth. In chemistry class they told
us work, the first couple weeks of chemistry you just learn definitions.
Work is the expenditure of energy to accomplish a task. Did you
expend energy or did Christ expend energy? That's the difference.
It's only two. It's either Christ or another.
But anyway, that's a tactic that the false preachers then, and
they do now, they use there with the Galatians, and they use in
this day, is they disclaim the preacher. They disclaim those
apostles. It's, well, he's not really an apostle anyway, or
he's not really a preacher, or he's preaching false gospel. My pastor's seen that happen
a lot. People got on to him and said, well, you're not preaching
the truth and you're not doing this. So what does he do? What's
the attitude of that man's sin of God? Does he address every
single thing? Every email that my pastor gets,
if he sat down and wrote, responded, a few paragraphs and studied,
looked that up and responded to every email, every phone call
or every comment that's negative that he got, he would never have
time to study. We'd never get to see him preach, would we?
So what does he do? What do those men of God do?
They keep declaring the gospel. They get up and they preach.
They ignore it. They got a job to do. They show up, they study,
they pray, they exhort, and they preach. And that's it. So Paul
tells them there in verse 1, he says, I am an apostle. Gets it right out of the way.
And this is, he tells him, I'm an apostle. And he said, this
is who made me an apostle. And then he gives him some good
news, don't he? So secondly here, Paul is used to proclaim the
word of the Lord to him. So in Galatians 1.1, it says,
Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus
Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead. Paul
tells him, first thing up front, I'm a servant of Christ. I'm
an apostle." And he had received his instruction directly from
the mouth of Christ. That's what made him, differs
him as an apostle. But we have no apostles in this
day. The apostolic era is over. We saw a small place by our motel,
the apostolic meeting or something, but that is over. No one in this
day can raise the dead. No one can heal the sick. No
one can preach in other languages that they've never heard, that
they've never spoken. No one can be bit by poisonous
snakes and still live. They can't part the waters. They
can't make the sun stand still. But God gave those apostles in
those times and those disciples those gifts to confirm to those
around them that He had sent them. That's why they were given
that. And the Spirit moved some of those men to write these scriptures
that we have. brought the New Testament for
us, and they tell us what our Lord did. They tell us who sent
them and who sends people now, and gives us examples like this
so we can look to. But we don't have those gifts
in this generation. What do we have? We have the
complete Scriptures. We have the complete Word, don't
we? We have the Lord's Word. And we have teachers and preachers
and pastors and missionaries and those that are sent by God
to declare Christ in the Scriptures. In verse 1, Paul says, he says
to an apostle, and he says, not of men. That means that everyone
didn't get together and vote and say he's our best representative,
we'll pick him. That's what that means. Not of
men. We saw what happened when the apostles tried to pick a
replacement for Judas, didn't we? It didn't work out good for
them. He says, neither by man. A man didn't convince him to
enter the ministry. So you're the best speaker we
have and you know a lot of this. You should do it. Now it says
there, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him
from the dead. This is the hard thing for me
to address. I feel really awkward telling
you about preachers and pastors and who's sin of God if I'm the
one preaching. It's easier for us to talk in the background.
It's different when I'm standing up here, but that's the truth
though. So how do we know if a man in this day is sin of God,
if that's one of his messengers? They don't have these gifts we
can lean on. How do we know? He tells the truth about God
and he gives Christ all the glory. A heavenly father, when I've
told you, I think I've told you that several times, but when
a cross was baptized there on the Mount of Transfiguration,
the heavens opened up and God the Father spoke audibly. And
He said, this is my Son in whom I'm well pleased. Believe on
Him. He preached Christ. That's the shortest sermon ever
preached. This is the Christ. He's God's
Son. Believe on Him. That's it. So
the Father preached Christ. Christ, while He was here, preached
Christ. The Apostles preached Christ. What do preachers nowadays
do? Tell you about man? Tell you
what you can do and exalt? A brother read this morning.
Does it exalt the person? Put down the Creator? No. It
doesn't. You preach Christ. Stay to it. But the Lord puts
a man in the ministry and puts a message in his heart to give.
Scott Richardson said that too. He was a mountain genius as they
call him. He could simplify things plainly
so we could understand them. What does a preacher do? He says,
I get a message from God's heart to my heart and I give it to
your heart. That's it. You just message. You give a
message. But now the Lord can give me
a message and I feel motivated to give it to you and I can give
that message. But that's all I am. I can't
make it effectual. I can't have that power to put
it in you and make you believe. If I could, the church would
look a lot different, wouldn't it? I'd have all my family and
children and everybody else, if I could make people believe.
But I can't do that. The Lord does that. I'm just
used in that way. An ambassador doesn't tell what
they think in other countries. They tell what our president
tells them to say, don't they? So, but I don't choose it. I don't create it. I don't make
it effectual. I can tell you who you have to believe on to
be saved, but I can't make you believe Him. Christ has to make
that effect. And the Spirit has to quicken you, has to touch
in your heart and give you life, give you ears to hear and a heart
to understand. But if a man can talk you into
something, Another man can talk you out of it. I've thought that
before. I thought I could convince people
of this just through logic and fact. That's not true. For a
while, for a season when I was younger, I could talk somebody
else right out of it. But we're told to prove the spirits,
to try the spirits, right? How do we do that? This is the
second small good bit of advice. Get you a King James Version
Bible. Sit down and when somebody's preaching, you look at it and
read with them, as they tell you, and read through it. Is
that what they say? Is that what that means? It's
English. It's black and white. Look through it. Try them. Make
sure they're telling you the truth. And if I'm up here and
I tell you something that's not in there, that's way off the
wall, get rid of me. It may hurt me, it may hurt you,
but don't let me stand up here and tell people that. But we
try those spirits and see if the Lord actually sent them,
if He's telling the truth about God and giving Christ the glory.
Alright, so Paul says here in verse 2, all these men are of
one accord. Is it one man preaching one message
that's off the wall or are they all preaching the same? So there
in verse 2, Galatians 1-2, it says, all the brethren which
are with me unto the church of Galatia, They're of one voice. That'd be easy to read over,
wouldn't it? Acts 4.32 says, "...and the multitude
of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul." Let's
look over to Philippians 2. I'll write a couple pages. Philippians 2 and verse 1. If there be therefore any consolation
in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the
Spirit, if any bows and mercies, fulfill ye my joy, that ye be
like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord and
of one mind." So is that the same in this day? Are all these
brethren of one voice, are they of one accord? Now we know a
lot of local assemblies of believers, people that know who God is and
know what Christ did and tells people that honestly. We know
that there's churches in Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Montana, here
in California. There's gatherings in Alaska,
Iowa, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, West Virginia, Washington, Mexico,
Ireland, England, New Guinea, Guyana, St. Croix down in the
Virgin Islands. And there's a bunch of other
ones, and that's just the ones that I'm, off the top of my head, I'm aware
of. But what do all these congregations have in common? Do they just,
do they tolerate one another? Like, we're allowed to, that's
my friend or my brethren, that's close enough. And is there just
a couple of doctrines that they have, plural, doctrines that
they have in common that, well, we agree on elections, so we
can be friends with them. No, that's not what it is. They
have one doctrine in common. They all believe the same Lord.
They all look to Christ, the same Christ, don't they? Not
another. But they all believe the same Christ and Him crucified.
That's what they preach. They agree that His redemption
was accomplished fully. They're on the cross. He keeps
us saints until we're with Him in glory. He holds us in His
hand. That's what every local church, local assembly of God's
people agree on eye to eye. So these Galatians, they need
an instruction during this error. And Paul establishes that he's
speaking on behalf of the Lord. He's a messenger of sin of God.
He also says he's speaking in unity with the brethren. We're
on, you're, you're an heir and we're all together on this. But
so what does he do with them? What does he tell them? Does
he scold them up front and get that out of the way? Does he
whip them real good? No, he gets to the most important
thing first. He reminds them and he prays
for them that the Lord be gracious to them. And he tells them for
what cause the Father would be gracious. So look back at our
text there in Galatians 1 and look down at verse 3. Paul tells
them what Christ our Lord did. to be able to receive that grace.
It says in Galatians 1.3, Grace be to you and peace from God
the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. It says grace to
you and peace. What a powerful statement. I
could never ask for anything greater for a sinner to receive
grace from the Lord and peace from the Lord. That is wonderful.
Grace is getting something we do not deserve. It's unmerited
favor. So by definition, you don't do
anything to get that. And that goes hand in hand with
peace, doesn't it? I want you to understand what that is. The
Lord gives us, His children, all spiritual blessings through
Christ. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30 says,
But of Him are ye and Jesus Christ, who of God has made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. That's true peace. And we know that God the Father
looks at me, if He has to see something good in me, I'm in
trouble. And if I'm alone on a ship and nobody around me for
a thousand miles, I can be honest with myself. I'm in trouble.
I don't have anything good in me. But when he looks at me,
he doesn't see me. He sees Christ's accomplished work, Christ's holiness. From the birth, from a virgin
until he's laid in the tomb, the entire time he solely lived
to accomplish the Father's will. He solely trusted the Father.
I can act like I trust the Lord until I walk out in that street.
Oh, there's a bee or there's a... Henry always said we have
full will until a fly lands on us. I'm going to concentrate
on that and it changes your mind really quick, doesn't it? But
whenever the Lord sees me and He sees only Christ, there's
no anger towards me. I've broken His law. He's not
mad with me. Like we saw last night, that's our Father, isn't
it? We can approach our Father. Turn to Romans 8 there in verse
1. no anger. Romans 8 verse 1, there
is now therefore no condemnation to them which are in Jesus Christ
who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. So that
grace and peace, grace and peace, where does that come from? How
are we made to have this grace and peace bestowed on us? Well
it's unmerited, it's not our merit, but it doesn't, nothing's
free, something came from it. Something had to pay for that.
Do we walk an aisle? Do we knock on people's doors?
Do we go around the neighborhood and harass our neighbors? No. Christ accomplished that work
already, didn't He? He paid the debt that we owed.
So we'll go back to our text here in Galatians 1, look down
at verse 4. Paul's established who he was
and he's in unison with the brethren. He asks the Lord to be gracious
to them and give them peace. And he tells them why. Galatians
1, 4, "...who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver
us from this present evil world according to the will of God
and our Father." Christ gave himself for us. He laid down
his life willingly. In the act of that, no one's
ever been able to do that. People profess their free will
and I have a choice. Well, stand right here and die.
The Lord did that. He said, I gave up the ghost.
He allowed his spirit to release. We can't just terminate ourselves
like that. But he laid down his life and
he did it willingly for us. He gave all of himself. He did it completely and He satisfied
the wrath of God for us. We can say those words, we can
kind of understand it, but we can never grasp the fact that
the Lord God Almighty became a man. He lowered himself lower
than the angels. And he walked this earth under
the law, living it perfectly, fully executing the will of the
Father. And then on that cross, God separated from God. God turned
his back on God. It would take eternity for me
to understand that. But why did he do that? Why did
Christ have to suffer that? He did that for me. He did that
for you. If we could get our hands around
that, we would be humbled always, wouldn't we? But it says there
in her text, it delivered us from that present evil world.
This world is nothing but death and iniquity. It's nothing but
sin, and we know that. And the older I get, the more
I know that. Just for me being a child until now, the changes
I've seen in the last 20, 30 years, it's unreal. And I don't
know a believer that ever lived that didn't think this was the
last generation. And that's true. We look for the Lord to come.
Like we learned last night, pray thy kingdom come. When Eve had
Cain, the Lord told her, I'm going to send a man that's going
to save my people. She had Cain, she said, I got
a man from the Lord. Now she was mistaken, but that's who
she was looking for. But we look for that because
we know that this world is nothing. And we know that we are of this
world, our own flesh is. We're literally made from it.
We come out of the dirt, didn't we? And that's what we go back
to. And there it says that He might deliver us from this present
evil world. Do we deliver ourselves? Do we save ourselves? He delivers,
doesn't He? So why did Christ give Himself
and deliver us from this body of sin and death? It says there,
according to the will of God and our Father. Christ was the
only perfect believer that ever walked this earth. He said, I
came to do the will, thy will, O God, not my own. From birth
to the tomb, he walked perfectly. He was only concerned about his
father's business. We can't even comprehend what
that means. I want to serve the Lord. I want
to accomplish the will of the Father, but to be consecrated
to Him always. Boy, he slept. We looked at it
before where Christ was on the boat and a storm came and they
were bailing water out. He was asleep, resting fully. While He was asleep, He trusted
the Lord, trusted His Father. And then with that work, that's
what the Lord sees when He looks at me. It's heartbreaking and
boy, how thankful. I'd be in trouble if it was any
other way. But why would anyone turn? That's what these Galatians
did. They turned from that Gospel. So how does that affect us? If
I came to you and I owned one of these big old companies that
sells stuff on the internet and I had billions of dollars and
I said, I'm going to pay for your vacation. I'm going to buy
you a yacht. You're going to go to Hawaii.
You're going to have servants. You won't have to cut your own
hair. They'll take the garbage out. Everything's provided for
you. Anything you want to do, all
the food, you have your chef. I paid for everything. When people
get mad at me, especially if you knew me and it wasn't a trick,
it was real, would you slap me in the face and say I'll do it
myself? Wouldn't all that be ridiculous, wouldn't it? If I
did that for my brother and he knows it was true and real, why
would he get mad at me? He would thank me, you know,
and I said, oh, I need you to take his trash out. That's what
we were talking about last night. That's my reasonable service. I'd jump
up and take all the trash out you want, buddy, you know. So
that doesn't make sense, so does it? So why would men and women
not be thrilled, I mean, tickled to death to have Christ do everything
for you? He did it all. Why would they
get mad? They want the glory. Here in
verse 5 we see why. The reason that natural man hates
the gospel of Christ. Here in Galatians 1 verse 5 it
says, To whom, speaking of Christ, be glory forever and ever. Amen. He gets the glory. That's why it stings. That's
why the natural man hates it. They get so mad at election.
People hate election until you realize that's the only hope
we have of salvation. And then you love it. That's
a good word, isn't it? Let's turn over to Revelation 5 real
quick. I won't keep you much longer. Revelation singular, right? Revelation 5 verse 11. And I beheld and I heard the
voice of many angels round about the throne and the beast and
the elders. And the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000
and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is
the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and
strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature
which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and
such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying,
Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth
upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever." They
say that with one voice, don't they? Christ is all. All the
glory goes to Christ. All that honor for a perfect
life is all His. All the power to keep His sheep
forever, that's His power, not ours. And the blessing we receive
from the Father, they're all through Christ, a cause of Christ. That's how we get them. And what's
that outcome? What will happen at the end if we do that, if
the Lord does that work in us? We'll sing cross praises forever,
won't we? That's how long it will take
to thank Him properly. So how does the Lord rebuke his
children? How does a pastor preaching to a congregation correct those
that are erring? How do we correct one another
if we have to? We point them towards Christ and we wait on
the Lord to give them grace and peace. That's how we do it. So
do you see how this works in us? If we have an erring brother
or something, be kind to them. We've talked so much about that
yesterday. How so soon removed? If the Lord took his hand off
of me, what would I be capable of? If we think highly of our
brethren, we think low of ourselves. But if we think lowly of somebody
else, that's because we're thinking high of ourselves. I pray the
Lord gives us the grace to be able to think more highly of
our brethren and see our true state. And that way we know if
he removed his hand from us, what kind of atrocities I'd commit
today. But Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning
and the end. And so if I, like I did before,
if I work through this text backwards, I see things backwards. I ain't
right. But if we start in verse five and worked our way up, Christ
gets all the glory. He gave himself for us. God is
gracious to us through the Spirit by showing us who we are, what
we are, and then what Christ finished on the cross. And then
we have peace. That's the order we live in,
isn't it? That solves all the problems for the true children
of God. When we see what we are, we see
who Christ is, and then we know, it's right there in Philippians
1, being confident of this very thing, He, that He hath begun
a good work in you, He will perform it until the day of Christ Jesus. If the Lord started that work
in those people, There He is. The closest thing you have in
this earth to Christ in the flesh is your brethren, is your brothers
and sisters. That's Christ in you. And so
how I treat them is how I treat the Lord. So would we be harsh
with them? put them under church punishment.
I'm thankful I don't even know what most of that stuff means.
Would we want to deal with them harshly? No. They're just like
me. I pray that as we go through
Galatians, See, that's how the Lord deals with us. He starts
with us patiently. Let us reason together. We can't reason with
the Lord. But that's how kind He is to us. Our Father sits
down and He reasons with us. He communes with us, doesn't
He? He comes to us and teaches us. Alright, I hope that's a
blessing. Let's pray together.