in two or three specific verses
today. And my focus is going to be gospel
unity. Pastor Trey spoke last week about
the sufficiency and the simplicity of the gospel. And I thought
to myself, you know, it'd be good to finish out the summer
really focusing on a couple of questions. And here are those
questions. You know, what is gospel unity? What tolerances
should we have in the context of gospel unity when it comes
to error, misunderstandings, wrong teachings or heresy? How
is it that we are to live in gospel unity in the midst of
constant chaos and flux and How are we to find our identity in
gospel unity as a church, as a family, as a community, as
a household, etc., etc., etc.? And so ultimately then, it goes
to the theme that I've been on for months now about living authentically
in Christ. Paul wrote the letter to the
Galatians. It was his very first writing.
Very first writing. Decade and a half or more after
his conversion on the way to Damascus, we see his gospel preaching
and his church planting and his evangelism start to take form,
and we see that in the latter part of the book of Acts, reported
by Dr. Luke, who was his companion because
he was in need of constant physician's care. Luke was a medical doctor.
And so Paul and his time in the region of Galatia, many cities
there, many communities, many churches, maybe hundreds of congregations,
if not more, God did a great work and he taught the people
of Galatia the truth of Christ and his sovereign grace, sovereign
and free. The travels and as time progressed,
other people began to think about other things just like we do
and the implications of our free thought, if I can call it that,
became the breeding ground for new ideas. And as we see Solomon
writing in Ecclesiastes, we see that there are no new ideas under
the sun. As a matter of fact, there is
nothing new under the sun, no, everything is just a redone idea,
a warmed over idea that someone else has already had. There is
no authentic, original language or poetry or something. There
are always things borrowed. And so our minds borrow from
other minds, borrow from other minds. And what we find in Galatia
is we have a Gnostic and then a Jewish and then a Judaizer
influence. several different things. We
don't have to get into the other. The first two is because Paul
didn't write the letter to Galatians in that context. He writes the
letter to the Galatians because the Judaizers, what were they?
These were people who happened to be ethnic Jews who supposedly
believed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But then began to contemplate,
well, you know, for millennia, our people have followed the
precepts of Moses and have followed the law and have done all of
these things. And, you know, we know we don't
have to do temple worship anymore, but there's one sign that must
remain, and that sign is circumcision. Of all things to choose to, you
know, like, man, I'm free from the law. Oh, happy condition.
Let me see. But there's something I got to
stay with something. Why not? Why not the prayers or why not
the bathing or why not the fasting? Let's just go straight to mutilating
our bodies. I mean, what man in his right mind thought of
that? But anyway, that's beside the point. That's a coffee talk
table discussion. But that's what was happening.
And so these Judaizers went into Galatia and they began to say,
hey, hey, we believe the gospel. And they could articulate the
gospel also. But they begin to put pressure,
they begin to put pressure on these people, saying, you know,
we are God's chosen for a long time, you are grafted in, this
is borrowed language in the context of the English translations that
we have today. And so, you know, we know a little thing or two
about being God's people, and there's something that you need
to understand, men. Circumcision is really something you should
be emphasizing. As a matter of fact, if you're
really born again, then obey through circumcision. Have you
ever heard that? Maybe not in your house in the context of
that, but if you're really born again, then you'll do these things.
If you're really a child of God, then you'll do these things.
Then you'll obey this way. People do it all the time. It's
been done to me my entire life. It's been done to me my entire
ministry. You think we're free as pastors
just to operate the way we think the Bible teaches us to operate?
We think we are, and then all of a sudden we find out for years
we've been following the mold of fearfulness, the mold of oppression,
the mold of being shackled by popular opinion, or public opinion,
or political opinion, or whatever other P you can think of there.
We just, we know that there's some pervasive ideas that people
impose upon us and then when they can attach it being divine
or good or righteous or worse, that if we don't do this then
we're not truly, we can't truly be sure that we're God's people.
I mean, what do we do as people? What do we do as humans when
we're motivated by fear of any kind? We jump to it. Not to everything. And it's not about naivety, it's
not about insecurity, it's about individuals and their level of
tolerance and their level of being able to exercise discernment
and to see through some of these things that happen in the world,
and specifically in the church. Paul hears of this. He hears
that these people have come and upset the churches of Galatia,
but not one time does this letter ever condemn any of the people
who have taken circumcision. Paul's not trying to free them
into righteousness imputed through Christ. He's not trying to free
them so that they could be born again. Paul's trying to free
them from the bondage because they're born again. I want you
to hear what I just said. There are people who would take
this letter written to, grace to you and peace from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins
to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will
of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever, amen. to the churches, to the gatherings
of Galatia. Jesus Christ, whom the Father
raised from the dead, we are together, Paul says, in
Christ. We are one people. You're going
to see that. That's the argument that he makes
here. We don't need to share circumcision because we share
in Christ. That's the argument. I'm not going to teach Galatians
because I really want us to focus on gospel unity today. But there are some who will upset
my faith, who have come to me and said, James, you're a smart
guy and all, and you've studied a lot, but there's some things
that you've gotten wrong. And one of the things that you've gotten wrong is you're
not reading really well in the context of Galatians. And Paul
says that anyone who takes circumcision is a curse. No, he doesn't. He
says, let these people have their way. Quit worrying about what
they're doing. Let them be a curse. If they
want to be cut off from Christ, let them cut the whole thing
off. That's what Paul says in here. He says a little bit nice,
I guess the English says, let them emasculate themselves. You
want to do it, do it all the way. Be a real man. Because God doesn't want half-hearted
attempts at worship. We can all be a high singing
choir for the next 20 years. I mean, it's written, just read
it, it's there. And so Paul's upset, he's upset
that people upset the faith of those who were settled by going
in and saying, hey, we know that you are confessing to be Christ's,
but we want to come in here and we want to add a condition to
the gospel. Now let me stop for a minute and let me say that
when someone comes into the congregation and adds a theological distinction
as a condition to the gospel, they too are just Judaizers with
a different sword, different knife, and a different snip.
And a lot of people that see James, I don't care really, because
what I care about is for you to be free, for you to not be
burdened by people who have no divine authority to come in and
upset your faith. And more importantly, that we
don't focus on people upsetting our faith, but we focus on being
unified in peace. Let us focus on peace. working
in the yards yesterday, and there's vines. I mean, what in the world
is like vines? And my wife's out there pulling
vines and yanking vines, and, you know, it's near 100 degrees.
And when we get through with all the vines, there's like six
little plants sticking up. Looks like something that the
lawnmower missed. Again, all that vegetation was just trash.
And for those of us who have ever had a garden, we know what
it's like. We've got this row, and if we don't weed it every
single day, the crop is overcome by the weeds. Why can't we create
a food genetically that grows like weeds? Just walk in there,
oh my gosh, look at the tomatoes. Can we burn some? No, it's not
like that. If we don't work to get the weeds
out, we're never going to get to the fruit. The same thing
is true in the context of our individual lives, of our individual
thoughts, of our individual relationships. If we think perfection is something
to strive for, we are fools from the beginning in anything. And when we hold other people
to a standard that we ourselves cannot meet, we are really pressing
the envelope. Not pushing it, we're smashing
it. And that's not freedom. And it's
no wonder why so many people walk around in drudgery. It's
no wonder why so many false gospels are so appealing. It's no wonder
that Christless realities of love are so enticing. Because people are just sick
and tired of being in bondage when the scriptures teach us
that we are free in Christ. And that freedom should make
us get up every day facing the day going, yes, this is the day
the Lord has made, but that's become a cliche or a platitude. And as an overseer of my own
soul and as an overseer of the teaching of the church, I have
a huge responsibility to make sure that my joy is authentic.
And beloved, it's not been. I haven't even tried to pretend
it in the last two, three years. So gospel unity. Let's go down
then to chapter three. And this is, I mean, there's
so much I could probably preach. And I've done that before. I've
preached an entire outline of Galatians in an hour. Paul just gives some examples,
he affirms the Gospel message, he affirms the simplicity and
the sufficiency of the Gospel as just preaching Christ and
Him crucified without all the theological implications. Those
are things that we learn as we grow. God does not need our vocabulary
to birth us anew. There are people who argue that
and they told me there's no way a child of certain cognitive
ability can be born again because they cannot comprehend the depths
of the gospel. Then Jesus is a liar and we should
all pull out the grills and just have a good time today. Because
Jesus says unless your faith is like these little children
and he's talking about toddlers. He's talking about toddlers.
who can't even speak full sentences, who were following him around
when he did his teaching. Toddlers bother people, right? Unless your faith is like these
little children, you will not, nor can you, enter into the kingdom
of heaven. God is in the business of bringing
life to his people, and that life is just resting And the
essence of knowing Christ is sufficient. And there are people
who will come and teach you all manner of who Christ is not.
And you may believe them. It doesn't mean that you're not
a child of God, that you're not born again. It means that you've
been deceived, and it happens every single day. And I have
been deceived, and I have deceived, thinking I was correct. And I
probably will do it again in some things. But I detangle myself
from the evangelical cult now going on 15 years, it's ramped
up. I'm starting to see that all
these little tiny nuanced things that have been going on in my
mind, I've been trying to get my handle on this and get a handle
on that and get my mind around this and focus on this and how
can I clean this up, that it's actually one huge thing. It's
actually revolving around one thing. They're all just symptoms
of one big problem and the one big problem is man loves power. And there's something extremely
and grotesquely powerful when people look at you and think,
if I don't do what they say, my life is in trouble. It's like
the comedian who said, as young boys we grow up and superheroes
aren't imaginations, they're options. They're career choices. And we do like that, you know,
and I'm not just picking on the men. I mean, some of you ladies
may have the same thing, but it's ridiculous. It's so self-centered,
it's maniacal. But when you get into that habit,
and I think the evangelical cult has had that habit of so long
of people becoming gods. and everything that they say
and everything that they do and every opportunity that they have
to just express themselves that moves the mind and the lives
and the money of others. And oh my goodness, there's one
way to stay in power is to marginalize people, to make them need you. And that's what the Judaizers
did in Galatia. That's what theological watchdogs do. And they don't
know it. They don't have the, you know, they don't have the
manipulators club. Hey, guys, every Thursday night at 11 p.m.,
let's get together. All right, what can we do now? Let's get
this strategy. No, they wake up every day with the zeal and
this fire in their heart that they think is from God. And they
come and they get into the place of the community and their entire,
quote, calling. it all and to impose their ideas
and their great wisdom on everyone else. And it's not just in the
church, is it? It's everywhere. It's a disease of man, of humanity. We think that we know it all
and we don't know squat, honestly. But what can we know? They come in and they just, they
want to upset us. And all it takes is just to plant
a seed, and then all of a sudden, then we get upset. Then we start feeding
ourselves, and then we start feeding others. And it's not
on purpose. Now, are there some that are on purpose? Yes. When
you call it out, and they go, nah, that's not me. And then
they go, well, you know what? I think I'm pretty. There are some. But
the majority of us just do it instinctively. And that's not unity. Just because
we all say the same thing, and dress the same way, and sing
the same songs, and walk in the same way, doesn't mean we're
in unity. Just because we can all confess
the same theological distinctions doesn't mean we're in unity.
What puts us in unity is that we're growing in love and that
love is of God even when we can't put our finger on what it really
is. That's the metanarrative of the
Bible. That's the revelation of God of himself to us. He loved
us in this way. and our identity is found in
the person of Christ. You know, I have searched and
searched and searched. Have you found who you really
are? No, you haven't. You found what you do. You found
what you like. You found what you know. You
found what you're good at. You've discovered things that
you might enjoy. You discovered the feeling and
the dopamine of those things around you that give you the
successes and give you the jitters and give you the butterflies.
But that's not who we are. Who are we? And Christendom throughout the
centuries has done a very good job of making sure that we as
the laity, but the clergy, we know who we are. We're great
sinners, but yet before you 60 minutes a week, twice a week,
three times a week, we're a great saint. So if we're the worst
of sinners, what does it say about the people in the pews?
So the only way to stand up is just to become legalistic and
start adding burdens. Because when we know we don't
shape up, we can just start whipping other people into shape and feel
good about our intentions. That is not the call of Christ.
And what I said has nothing to do with telling you that you
can sin how you want to. That's silly. No one said that. We're not ridiculous. We know what is good and prudent.
So in chapter 3 of Galatians, Paul, let me just start there
in verse 1. He says, O foolish Galatians! Now these are his brothers and
sisters in Christ, siblings in the Lord Jesus, siblings who
by grace have been saved. And Paul has already talked about
those that came from James and who were eating there with the
Gentiles and how Peter, or Kepha, or Cephas as we say in the South,
How he came and he sort of tried to play favoritism and look a
little bit more pious by not eating certain things. And what
did Paul do? Paul walked up and tapped him
on the shoulder and said, hey bro, man, you stinking right now. And the
way you're acting right now is not gospel. This is not Christ. This is clean. And quit acting
like you're something special so that you don't get judged
by it. Let these people judge you based on your conscience.
That's why I read out of 1 Corinthians this morning about conscience. He says, it was before your eyes
that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me
ask you only this. Did you receive the Spirit of
works by the law or by hearing with believing and resting in
faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are
you now being perfected by obedience in the flesh? Are you now being
perfected by doing things in the flesh? Are you now being
perfected by circumcision of the flesh? Did you suffer so
many things in vain or worklessly, if indeed it was in vain? Does
He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among
you do so by works of the law? or by hearing and believing.
Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as
righteousness, know then, here's my verse today, verse seven and
eight, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of
Abraham. Notice what he says there, it's
not about your blood lineage, it's about God proving you're
his by faith. And the scripture foreseeing
that God, or foretelling that God would justify the Gentiles
by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying,
and here is the gospel according to Abraham, according to Paul,
to the people of Galatia, in you shall all the nations be
blessed. So then those who are of faith
are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. Now there's
so much more that I could go to there. But for the focus that
I want to deal with today, there are two things. And then we're
going to go at the very end, I'm going to give you a few applications in
verse 38 of the same chapter. Galatians 3.8, the scripture
foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached
the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the
nations be blessed. This scripture, this passage,
this allusion back to Genesis 12, I think, is God showing the incredible depth
of His grace, sovereign and free in the gospel of unity. And what
I want to do today in this exploration is to sort of bring to light
seven or eight things and theological implications to help us understand
this unity. The first thing is this, understanding
sovereign grace. It is a divine initiative. What
does that mean? God started it, God purposed
it, it is the reason the world exists. The reason the world exists is
not for God's people to walk in such a way that, you know,
we become Puritans, or we become Catholics, or we become Baptists,
or we become Sovereign Grace people, or whatever name or title
you want to put on a system of acting and thinking. Sovereign
grace is a divine initiative. God is the author, God is the
instigator, God is the power, God is the sealer, God is the
finisher. Paul says that in Hebrews, right? That Jesus Christ, looking
to Him, the author and perfecter or finisher of our faith. The
word perfecter is not actually an English word according to
the spell check in documents for 20 plus years. It's always
like a squiggly line underneath it. So God's grace is by definition
unmerited. Now we have learned that there
is a manifold. I want you to hear this. There's
a manifold. What's that mean? Many different ways of understanding
the term, the word grace in every language in the world. And there's
a difference between grace and being gracious. And in the Bible,
we see that grace, by definition, means something that's given
to someone else without them earning it. Which is not a wage. A wage is due the person who
works. If you work, you are due the
wage. Good or bad. You do the crime,
you do the time, you see? You dig the hole, You dig your
own hole as you get paid. You dig yourself out of it. But
when it comes to God in the Bible, when the idea, the term is ascribed
to God, the word grace or the idea of grace is always given
to his people. And it's always salvific. So
when God is exercising grace, or when the scripture, the teaching
of the New Testament, even the Old Testament, talks about God's
grace, it's always in the context of applying it to His particular
people. Whether it be the nation of Israel,
whether it be, goodness, Jonah, wherever Jonah
went, my mind just went dead. Yeah, there you go, thank Nineveh. In those places, God's grace
is salvific. He's giving an unmerited blessing. And in this divine initiative,
God has an unwavering purpose and plan to save his people among
humanity. This is God's action. He chose
Abraham and the descendants of Abraham to be recipients of this
divine blessing. And we understand that salvation
is not nor can be earned. It is a finished work and it
is freely given by God to those He chooses. Simple and sufficient. Simple. In Genesis 12, God speaks to Abram and says,
go from your country and your kindred and your father's house
to the land that I will show you and I will make you a great
nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that
you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you and him who dishonors you I will curse and in all the families
of the earth shall be blessed. In Ephesians 3 we see the sentiment
of this reality. It's by the will and the counsel
of God, by the pure pleasure of God and his love for In love
he adopted us to become sons and daughters. And Paul prays
in the verse 14 of chapter 3 of Ephesians, he says, for this
reason now I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family
in heaven and on earth is named. I want you to hear that, from
whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. that according
to the riches of His glory, He may grant you, beloved, to be
strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you,"
you, this is a specific characterization of the audience, of you, the
Ephesian church, and of you, beloved, who are receiving this
same word, being rooted and grounded in love. This is the theme. We as the saints are rooted and
grounded in love. If we're not rooted and grounded
in love, we don't have the gospel in our minds. Because the good report is the
love of God. Christ was rooted and grounded
in the grave. Isn't that funny? That's just my correlation. And this is the prayer, that
you who are rooted and grounded in love may have strength to
comprehend in your minds, with all the saints, what is the breadth
and the length and the height and the depth, and to know the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled
with all the fullness of God. People are always looking to
be filled with all the fullness of God and every silly means
necessary. And the only way to be filled
with all the fullness of God is to count yourself and your
identity in Christ. Not the Christ of evangelicalism,
not the Christ of America, not the Christ of the nations, but
the Christ of scripture. This reinforces what I've said
in weeks past, our dependency on God for salvation and then
our interdependency with each other to continue to grow, to
be encouraged, to adopt a humble and receptive and loving and
intimate stance toward others because of the love and the intimacy
that God has granted us in Christ. It is really that simple, but
it's the hardest thing to do. The second thing that we see
here is that this gospel is a divine
initiative, but it's also a proactive gospel. And sometimes people
get all boogered up about God's foreknowledge. And there are
a lot of different theological points of view over the last
three to four hundred years in the academic circles of men who
needed more hands-on work and less time at the desk. to do
things that were more productive, but oh well, it is the will of
the Lord. But there are people who are all boogered up about
God's foreknowledge, and they see here in the scripture where
it says, the scripture foreseeing. What that means is basically
showing us, the prophets of old showing us, Moses showing us
what God had revealed to him. It wasn't God looking at the
Bible going, oh, that's what's going to happen. Or God looking through
the course of time and seeing what free agents would do and
going, okay, I know how to stack my team now. No. Scripture teaches very clearly
that I am God and there is no other, and I do exactly what
I want to do, and none can stay in my hand, and I can make a
bird fly from one side of the world to another, or a rich man
and a ruler go here. I can take Nebuchadnezzar, the
ruler of nations, and make him think he's a cow laying naked
in a field eating grass. and defecating on himself for
months. And then in the snap of my divine
finger, I can bring him back to prominence. I do what I wish. Now the trouble is if we have
the understanding of God that's maniacal, disciplining, wicked. I saw a show last night that
reminded me that this is the view a lot of times that people
have of God. And the reason they have it of
God is that God is ready just to whip us up into shape and
to punish us. It's because two things, they've forgotten what
the scripture teaches about the good report. That's not the good
report. Hey, daddy's home. I'm leaving. And secondly, because
the leadership, I'm going to put some adjectives in here that
are going to really upset some people, but the patriarchal Caucasian
Anglo leadership of the church for the last 2,000 years has implicated marginalizing
people and keeping them in shackles by rooting them into a place
of, or rutting them into a place of living according to their
standards rather than to the standards of scripture. And it's now presented theological
roadmaps and blueprints that by design keep people in those
places, you and me in those places. And this is not the God of the
Bible. The God of the Bible is a God of justice and righteousness
and goodness. He's not doing anything in the
context of justice that's not right. But what wasn't right was that
he give grace. Except that that justice was
served in the perfect one, Jesus Christ, you see. So the scripture teaches. Peter
says that, doesn't he? In his first letter. We've not
come up with myths and gotten together and came up with all
these stories. I mean, this is the prophets. This is everything.
The old, the old writings, which you do very well to pay attention,
folks. That's what Peter says. about
who Christ is and what he did. We didn't see it. Paul says that
to the Corinthians in the second letter. We didn't see it. For
eons, we didn't see it. It was like Moses with a veiled
face. He couldn't even see God. And then we couldn't even see
the reflection of what he couldn't see because it frightened us
too much. Too much. And now, with an unveiled face,
we stand face to face and we peer into the face of our Father,
into the face of our Savior, like we would to the face of
our lover. We look deep into the eyes of our Creator, the
God who loves us, who gave Himself for us, that by faith we rest
in the sufficiency of His love and His intimacy with us. This
is our identity. This is the power of God unto
salvation. This is our purpose. And so beyond loving as God has
loved, we'll get to that in glory. The beyond that. And if we spend
all of our time, if we spend all of our time thinking about our insecurities, about
our insufficiencies, about our sins, then we're not living by
faith or by the Spirit, we're living by the flesh. Because
either we're just giving up in our hopelessness of despair,
or we're driving forward to try to become and perfect ourselves,
not by trusting and resting, but by doing and working. And this is the subtle, sometimes
it's obvious, you get your fundamentalist out there and they're like hitting
you with bricks when you walk around. I mean, I've had a guy
shake my hand before and the first question out of his mouth
is, so when do you think you were born again? And quite honest,
I don't have that answer. I can't remember a time when
I was not sufficiently resting since my childhood in the Christ
of Scripture. And his next words were, well,
because you can't pinpoint that, you're probably lost now. And
I'm going, thank God I'm not in a depressed state. Go cry
in the bathroom at a pastor's conference. But I avoided that
guy the rest of the time. He's like, hey, Tiffins, come
sit with us. I'm like, I'm not going over there. Like I do at the fair, I pretend to
only speak French. Hey, when you little lady a thing? God's foreknowledge. This shows us that God's plan
of salvation comes to pass. God is omniscient. His plan for
salvation of His people was established before the foundation of the
world, Ephesians 1. This is sovereign grace. God's purpose is coming
to pass. He is immutable, that means He
does not change, and He is eternal. He has no beginning to even His
desires or plans or love. I've said this a lot, but I don't
think we embrace it. I know I don't. I forget it sometimes.
I put it on the shelf. God never began to love me. He
always has. You too. The third thing I want us to
see in this idea is our unity is found through justification
by faith. It's a divine paradigm. This reality that God's plan
to justify not only His chosen people, which was a small picture
of what He would do for the nations because He called them out of
Ur, Chaldeans. Remember, Abram was not Jewish. There was no
Israel until Abram's son. And so in all of this, now we
see this plan. before the foundation of the
world, showcasing God's unconventional love for his people, for all
nations, for all tongues, for all tribes, regardless of ethnicity
or culture or gender or economics or power. And we're called to
replicate this love with each other, we're called to embrace
and seek and reframe our understanding with each other in a way that
is congruent with God's unconditional love for us. Does it mean we
like everything? Does it mean everybody that we
get along with is going to be perfect? No, but neither are
we. And we have to stop measuring other people's sins against our
sins and saying, well, theirs are a little worse than ours.
And we need to measure our righteousness against Jesus Christ and realize
that in and of ourselves, we miss the mark. And the only way we don't miss
the mark, the only way we have access to interrupt the worship
of heaven and say, hey pops, and I'm not saying that disrespectful.
That's what the word Abba is. The Bible says we can call God
pops. And he stops and he inclines,
Psalm 40, he inclines his ear to us. He bends down to us, He
bent down to us by sending His Son in a human body to live and
die for us and to be raised from the dead. We must replicate, we must live
this, we must promote unity and reject any forms of prejudice,
any forms of discrimination, any forms of favoritism. The fourth thing I want you to
see this morning is that when it comes to the gospel and Abraham,
there's a continuity and clarity of the covenant. See, I could
preach two hours on this section alone. There's a continuity. In other words, what God had
promised Abram was for us. We were there, right? All nations
will be blessed. It wasn't about Abram. It wasn't
about Abraham, which means the father of many. It wasn't about
him, but he probably thought it was, because that's what guys
do. I got this task, man. I'm going to be something else.
That's all right. God didn't have to overcome Abraham's arrogance
and deception. That man's body's rotted in the
grave, and now he's standing with all humility, knowing, man,
I didn't get nothing right. But God got it all right. And
the same thing is true there as parents, as husbands, as friends,
as brothers, as sisters, as wives, as mothers, we are never going
to get it right. We're going to get some things
right. I'm going to get a lot of things wrong, just like the weeds are
going to overtake the harvest. But we just keep walking out
the reeds. And the flowers and the fruit will be there. God's promise to Abraham signified
the beginning of the gospel. to him. But where is the beginning
of the gospel? In the very beginning, when God
said, let there be light, there was light. By saying that he would reconcile
through the seed of the woman, his people to rescue them from the
death of the serpent. As the church, we are part of
God's covenant. And we are strengthening our
connection with the biblical narrative. And increasing our
responsibility to live out God's promises. It's like Paul talks
about the far off being brought near. And sometimes we think
when we think about that, we think, well, yes, we're the far
off, but I wish I had been near for longer. But guess what? The
ones who were near were still not in. Think about that. The near were
not close enough. It's about marriage. It wasn't
about proximity. It's about intimacy. It's about
covenant, it's about love, and Christ pursues us. He came to
earth. He died on the cross. He rose
himself from the grave. It's not about blood or desire
or decision, but God's desire and purpose and plan and will
and counsel. And we continue here and we see
all nations. This, the fifth thing that I
want you to see is the inclusivity of the gospel, the unity and
diversity. Why is it so hard for us to get to the place where we embrace the differences of
our congregation? We embrace the differences of
our community. When, who wrote the memo some hundred something,
200, 300, 400, 500 years ago? In every community, who wrote
the memo that says, here's the place a real Christian should
live. Here's how a real Christian,
you know. There was a satirical thing done some years ago by
this sort of wild church, but. It's an old movie of Jesus and
they're dubbed out and he's standing there and he says, okay, good
morning church, welcome to the first Christian church meeting,
here are the rules. You're not allowed to have any
fun unless you're poking fun at how dumb the devil is. You
must wear a stylish beard like mine. These are the silly, you
can't wear t-shirts unless they have my face on it. You're not
wearing your WWJD bracelets, et cetera, going on. And all
these little cultural things. You can only eat at Chick-fil-A,
you can only shop at Hobby Lobby. But when you start laying back
the layers of this, I'm being funny, but there's a lot of not
funny implications of the way Christian culture has been laid
out for us. And one of those is that we have tried to make
everyone look like us, think like us, and to implicate them
as not worthy of love if they don't. And I think everyone in the room
can put their finger on the timeline in their life, maybe more, maybe
hundreds of times where that's been true for you. All nations, the gospel is inclusive,
but it's also exclusive. It's inclusive despite where
you come from, despite what you look like, despite what you do,
despite what you believe. But it's exclusive and that God will
give those he wishes to the son. that God desires unity, unity. And that is not unity in the
academics of theological precision. That is unity in growing up in
love. And then we work out the others
as we move forward. Now some people will hear me
say that God uses lies in the context of regeneration. God
doesn't use anything in the context of regeneration except His Spirit
as He wishes and it blows. There's nowhere in the Bible
that says someone must hear specific things in order for God to make
them alive. And there is a sense in which
many people are sometimes born of God and not even know they're
born of God because they haven't been in the scripture long enough
to be taught the teaching of being born of God. And they go,
oh, that's what happened to me. Thank you, Lord. And anyone who would argue that
is just, I don't even want to say myopic, it's just foolish. In Ephesians 2, that's where
I was going. I was like, what am I talking
about? I lost my mind. Verse 14, this is where I was
alluding to a minute ago. Verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus,
you were once far off. The Ephesians have been brought
near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace.
He is our peace. who has made us both one and
has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility
by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that
he might create in himself one new man in the place of two,
so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through
the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and he
preached peace to you who were far away and peace to you who
were near. For through him we both have
access to one spirit to the Father, so you're no longer strangers
and aliens, but you're fellow citizens with the saints and
members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone
in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a
holy temple of the Lord." And there's a period there. Nowhere did that prescription
start giving you details and distinctions about all these
things that we bring and say must be in place. This is about the gospel. We'll
learn and grow through those things as possible, but our unity
is in the finished work of Christ. And we clarify that finished
work of Christ together as the church, and then we live it out.
We're here to learn, not so that we can go out and correct anyone.
We're not here to correct anyone. That is not the call of any Christian
whatsoever, to correct anyone that God has not intimately put
into your life for that purpose. Well, we've got the internet,
it doesn't matter. Paul didn't have the internet. The church should reflect the
diversity of ideas, the diversity of race, the diversity of economy,
the diversity of life. We should look like our community. and not be looking to make sure
everyone lives like we live, but that we do hold the standard
of loving like we are to love. And until we get that, we can't
deal with any other speck in the eyes of others. The sixth thing, blessings, the
blessings in Christ, the fulfillment of God's promises. See, God's
promise to Abraham was twofold. Just like all the Psalms and
all the other prophecies, there were always two or three ways
it was fulfilled. It was always a temporal or personal
or national or regional. But in the fulfillment of those
things, there was also an eternal. When it comes to Christ, Christ
is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Jesus Christ. As the body of
Christ, the church is called to live as heirs of the promise,
bearing witness to the grace we've received. Nothing else
and nothing more. How does that work? I don't know.
Depends on the need. Depends on the circumstance. Depends
on the conflict. Where are the weeds in the life of the church?
Conflict. Where are the weeds in the life of marriage? Conflict.
Where are the weeds in the life of parenting? Conflict. When
is that? The majority. We're always at
the precipice, right? One of the things that I used
to do early in my 20s when I'd do magic shows and stuff, I had
this balloon that I could blow up really, really big, and I
could put a really big needle in there and put a string through
it, and I could pull the string out and the balloon wouldn't
pop, it'd still be stunning. And I'm scared to death of a
balloon, but that balloon would never pop. And I could get it
this big. And I'd always blow it up around
the most skittish person I could find. You know, oh, oh, just wait a
minute. That's how we live. We live in that place. There's
always just a second away from the membrane breaking and something
being contrary to what we want, to what we think, to what we
feel. But we pick up the pieces, we
move on, and we find intimacy. And we make it clear how to work
through the conflict, to be honest about it. We don't run away and
make demands. We don't treat with disdain.
We don't hurt other people on purpose. You see what I'm saying?
You know those types of people. They don't like you because you
don't agree with them on something, and then they make your life
miserable. It isn't that you just agree that you're not on the
same page. They want to hurt you. And maybe
you don't have that experience. Or maybe you've only had that
experience at work. Maybe you've only had that experience. But
I've had that experience at church. And only at church. Of course, for
a quarter century, church has been my work. But I've had other
things. I've been in other places. I've
been in other organizations. I've worked other types of jobs. But there is a call to faith.
We must believe in this promise. And this is a gift of God. God's
declaration of his plan encourages us to rest faith in his promise. Like Abraham, who trusted in
God's promise, even though he couldn't understand the plan. We can trust that God has secured
our righteousness in Jesus Christ. So this calls the church to be
a community of faith where each member continuously cultivates
trust in God's promises. I didn't realize how amazingly powerful being encouraged
by the scripture was from someone else until last week when I called
a friend, a lifelong friend, to tell him about something completely
non-spiritual. And he said, well, you know,
James, he said, the reason that you have seen what you have seen,
don't ever forget that God gets the glory for this outcome. And he quoted scripture and he
quoted scripture, and I didn't need anything else. I'm like,
man, is that what it feels like when I do it to you? We are to encourage each other
in the truth, not correct each other. There's nowhere where
it says correct one another. There's an oversight in correction.
We do it in love, but we do it through positive doctrinal application
and teaching. We encourage you to remember, don't forget the
love of God. Don't forget the promise. Don't
forget the power of God. No, how dare you not have faith? You see? But it's easy to do. The final thing I want us to
see before I close it out on application is that we live the
gospel and our unity is a testament of this faith. The gospel's essence
lies in the loving and intimate relationships we establish with
the church in our homes, reflecting the gospel, the unity of love
within the triune God. John 17, where Jesus, I think
I was in there a week before last, That we are one with Him. Christ is one with the Father.
We are one in Him. We are all one. As partakers
of the gospel, we must work to promote unity, love and respect,
dignity, proving to the world that we are indeed the disciples
of Christ. John 13, 35. Jesus never said they will know
you are my disciples because of the clothes that you wear.
They will know that you are my disciples because you cover your
toes. They will know that you are my disciples because you
blow your nose. They will know that you are my disciples because
you brush your teeth and wipe your behind. No. They will know you are my disciples
because of what you take or leave behind. Say, I'm a poet. Here
it comes. No, they will know that you are my disciples because
you love one another. And I've heard it once, I've
heard it a billion times, and it's utter nonsense. Well, sometimes
love is tough and it just keeps it real. I don't want that love.
Get away from me. That's not the love I'm looking
for. I'm looking for compassion, understanding, and being seen
and heard, and then being encouraged when the opportunity promotes
itself. There's nothing better than a good rebuke with love,
but that's not the mainstay. It's hard. This passage that we've just
seen illuminates God's sovereign grace and his vision for a united
church, a community of believers called to embrace his grace,
live out his promise and foster unity and being diverse people.
We're not all a bag of toenails or bag of eyeballs. We're all
different. And by doing so, we see the legacy
of Abraham. We see what it means to be a
blessing. To all nations, Jesus Christ. Now go to verse 28. I don't know why I said 38, there's
not that many verses in there. Verse 25, but now that
faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ
Jesus you are all sons and daughters of God through faith. For as many of you were baptized
into Christ, being found immersed into Christ, it wasn't about
water baptism there, have put on Christ. There is neither Jew
nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female,
for you are all one in Christ. And if you are Christ, then you
are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. There's
a lot of water under that bridge between those 20 verses. But our understanding of God's
sovereign grace and unity from Galatians 3. And the implications that we've
derived can be fully, listen to this term, embodied through
the application of verse 28. These verses that I just read highlight
the absolute equality in the body of Christ. There is no hierarchy. There is no one who dominates
another. There is no one who is to be subservient to another.
We are all to be serving one another. The pastors are not
in control. The men are not in control. The
husbands are not in control. We are to be submissive to one
another equally. And this is not the first time
I've said this, but it's the first time I've put this in the context
of the gospel. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the
church by giving himself up. laying himself down. Fathers, do not exacerbate your
children, for you have not the authority nor right nor power
to do so. I'm the daddy. I do what I want
to do. That's not Christ-like. You see,
I don't even get me started. I'm not going to box anybody
but the men this morning on that one. It's not my place. I'll
let Robin get up here and box the ladies if she wants to. But in light of sovereign grace,
we recognize that our salvation is not based on what we are or
what we do, but on God's unwarranted love and favor. In light of the
gospel of unity, we're called to practice this divine equality
within the church community. No one is more privileged or
less valued. Each of us have equal parts in
Christ. The church, as a reflection of
God's kingdom, should be a people who gather in a place where the
societal norms that foster division and inequality are transcended. In Christ, all are equal. This
divine equality must be demonstrated in how we value, respect and
treat each other in our church, in our homes and in our communities.
As I was taught as a child, as a teenager, which is high standards
of Christian living. As believers, we are urged to
apply these principles in our personal lives and in our relationships
with others in the church. This includes respecting the
dignity and value of every person, fostering a spirit of unity in
our differences, promoting equal participation in church activities
and functions and leadership, and displaying Christlike love
in all of our interactions. Let me give us six quick lessons.
I'm just going to read these on how to truly embody this.
Lesson one, cultivate humility. Humility is the cornerstone of
embodying divine equality. God's sovereign grace has saved
us, not our works. Every one of us are seen as equal
in God's eyes. Lesson two, embrace diversity.
Celebrate the cultural, racial, and social diversity of our brothers
and sisters in the faith. Engage in learning about their
culture, learning about their tradition. You know, I had someone
tell me years ago when they were really focused on what they were
calling personal purity. Don't even get me started on
the purity movement and what it represents. I'm not saying
we shouldn't be pure, the Bible says us to. They were talking about how women
dress, and this is a woman, and all sorts of things. And I said,
well, what do we do when we go to a country in West Africa and
they all are sort of nude? Well, if they come to Christ,
we need to buy them some clothes. If they come to Christ, we need
to circumcise them. It's the same thing. It's nonsense. We
don't need this. Lesson three, we need to foster
equality. Galatians 3.28 tells us we are
all one in Christ. So we need to ensure that our
actions, our words, our thoughts, our attitudes promote this unity. Speak out against prejudice among
us and seek to build an environment where everyone feels valued and
heard. Lesson four, we share in fellowship. participate in
what we can together in life, in church activities or community
activities, social events, spend time with fellow believers outside
the church, building authentic relationships that reflect God's
love, even with unbelievers. Can you believe that? Yes, believe
that, because that is the model of Christ and Paul and the apostles.
They hung out with unbelievers a lot more than they did believers,
and not under pretense the way we think it was. It was authentic
intimacy, authentic love, and authentic concern, knowing that
as the time opened, we could also share the gospel. Lesson five, display leadership
as a servant, just like Christ did. I did not come to be served,
but to serve. Look for opportunities to serve
one another. No matter what, you have an opportunity to serve
one another, especially in prayer. Be honest about the need for
prayer. And the sixth, this is going
to sound so odd coming out of my mouth because it's trigger
words and it's become political, but we need to advocate for justice
and righteousness. We need to advocate to seek justice
and defend the oppressed. We need to, as believers, stand
up for those who are marginalized and mistreated. We need to embody
the justice of God, stand against those things in our community
or the world at large, support initiatives that aim to bring
justice, unity, and peace, reflecting the heart of God for justice. So as we see these things, as
we see the gospel, we are called and commanded to live it out.
And these are just six quick things off the top of my head
that I believe will get us started. Are we doing them? Yes and no. We do these things as we have
opportunity, and it starts in our homes, and then it comes
to our family of faith, and then it goes to our community at large. Beloved, we're not all going
to be the same. Some of us will never share the faith like the
other. Some of us may not even ever articulate the gospel, but
we will say and speak of it in conversations in subtle ways.
That's okay. Some of us may never go out there
and cut someone's grass or pay someone's bills or hug someone's
neck, but we can pray in the silence of our bed as we go to
sleep. God uses each one of us uniquely
and powerfully to create His purposes in each of our lives.
Quit measuring yourself through the lens of some other person.
and embrace who you are in Christ Jesus, redeemed and forgiven
by His sovereign grace and love. Let's pray. Father, may your
word be true in all that I've said. And Lord, what I haven't
said, may your word be true. I pray that as we continue to
worship and to take your table, that we would be reminded of
your grace, of your love for your people who are saved because
you loved us first. And then all of us would say,
oh, we love you, but Father, if we're not loving others, we're
not actively loving you. Remedy that in our lives. Without
guilt, without shame, without condemnation in our spirit, do
not let our own hearts and minds condemn us, for you are greater
than our hearts. Father, you've told us that. So let's stand bold with our
chin up and our shoulders back and stand if we're able and just
walk in a manner worthy of the calling that you've given us
in Christ Jesus. And let us be a lover of people in our own
gifts, in our own way and in our own time. Father, you've
created us to be who we are. You've created good works for
us to walk in. So Lord, teach us these good
works. Let us not keep looking to everybody else's standard,
but be who you've made us to be and live how you've called
us to live. And we can be an example in humility
to everyone around us, an example in love to everyone we meet.
So in that, Lord, we do have a lot of work inside. have a
lot of work in our minds and our hearts and with our time,
but even then, what you have ordained will come to pass. We
are among great people, a lot of losers who have done a lot
of terrible things, who have produced more weeds than fruit.
We thank you, Father, that the true fruit of our lives is not
from us and is not even in us. but is in the Spirit who is in
us. And it is by the name of Christ,
your Son, that we pray. Amen.