Something that's extremely important
is for us to remember that the New Testament was written to
believers. To believers. There is not one
introduction to any New Testament letter that starts out, to the
saints of such and such and to the suckers who think they're
saved, but aren't. There's no letter in the New
Testament that ever addresses unbelievers as an audience. Therefore,
the New Testament writings are not evangelistic in a way that
would produce the friction to call for salvation. Rather, it
teaches and instructs salvation. It teaches and instructs on grace.
It teaches and instructs on the dichotomy between self-righteousness
and grace-righteousness. The same is true for this letter. So when we see areas in the writings
of the New Testament apostles and it calls us to put away certain
things or reminds us, remember that adulterers and liars and
thieves cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, it is not a call for
us to get our lives right that we might be justified before
God. It is a reminder of us of what God has done to justify
us. And the outcome of that is that
we are no longer thieves, murderers or torturers, even when we struggle
and often and sometimes practice those sins. We do not make light
of them. We do not use grace as a license
for licentiousness, debauchery and evil things. But it is a
motivator for us to see the reality that Christ died for these things,
died for his people in order for these things not to be credited
to their account. Therefore, our guilt is gone. Our life is new and it is secure
in the finished work of Jesus Christ through whom we have life,
propitiation, forgiveness, adoption. Last week we finished up the
first 10 verses of chapter 2 in the book of Galatians. And we
saw that Paul affirming the fact and pressing down, if not doubling
down on the reality that he had not learned the gospel through
the traditions of men, but he learned it from God himself.
And not only that, but he did not take the other disciples
at face value that just because they called themselves disciples
or that there were other congregations around the area that he just
took it for face value that they were Christians. As a matter
of fact, Paul wouldn't have used the term Christian during his
time. But he went and he inquired and he made sure to clarify and
defend the gospel of free grace, the gospel of sovereign grace,
so that he could affirm them as brothers. And in verse 11, Paul gives yet
another example of how he is not a fanboy in the sense of
camaraderie. with disciples and or apostles
to the detriment of the gospel. In our world today, in the Christian
circle of our culture, a man who calls himself a pastor is
untouchable. He's the quote anointed of God
and he's above all and beyond all. Now he may not say that
but in our culture that is the image that we portray upon men
like me who talk for a living. Who take what's written down
in the textbook and read it and act like we're smart or something.
You ever had a class where the professor just read from somebody
else's text? It is the most boring thing you'll
ever experience. Not only that, I can read five
to six hundred words a minute. I don't need somebody to blab
it out slowly when I could read it quicker. But it's different
with the Word of God. In the sense that if I read it
to you, you read it to yourself, we read it together, then we
talk about it. But in essence, I'm really only just reading
the textbook. I'm only just extrapolating and
expounding without a lot of insight, if you will, from my mind, but
the insight comes from the text. It's not brilliance at all, but
even then the culture looks at it in some way that they try
to esteem the teachers of the Word, sometimes above the Word
itself. It's easier sometimes for people
to go and say, well, this man says this or this pastor says
that or historically this guy has said this. I had someone
argue with me early in the afternoon that historical theology of which
through our study of Galatians in the last four or five weeks,
I've really sort of beaten up a little bit. He argued that
historical theology along with exegesis, or looking at the Bible
and reading what it says and coming out of that, those together
form our doctrinal positions. To which I nearly frisbeed my
phone into the rain, but I can't afford another one, so I pretended
in my mind I would throw it. Ah, did you hear that wind? Crash!
That's how I would think about what you had to say. To the point
where I could not get him to see that what he was saying is
nothing shy of cultism, of humanism, of taking that which has always
been agreed upon historically and putting it beside the Bible
in authority. I think it's ridiculous. But
I think it's what plagues us. And it might not be historical.
It may be present. It may be contemporary. It may
be, well, my pastor says this or my pastor says that. Well,
a true shepherd guides the sheep to eat the food that God has
prepared for them. God is the master chef. He is
the one who gives the table and sets the table and has provided
the menu. He is the one who has given the
sustenance through the bread of life, which is the Word of
God, who is Jesus Christ. And a good shepherd feeds the
sheep sheep food. John 10 should come to mind.
Sheep hear his voice and they hear and they come out and they
follow the voice of their shepherd and they eat the right food and
they grow. But if I'm only telling you what
I want you to see. That I'm manipulating you, not
teaching you. And that therein is a problem
in our world. Another part of this fanboyish
idea about pastor-teachers is, and I'm not saying we do not,
let me just put it this way, we should give glory to God for
the teaching of His word, but not glorify the men who do it.
It's a big difference. And we should be thankful for
God's provision through the shepherds of the church, not worship them
as though they are the true shepherd. There, I've said that so that
your conscience can be at ease. Well, I just like your teaching.
Okay, great. Praise the Lord for it. But on the same vein
of thinking, sometimes even when a man who teaches is absolutely
wrong and is traditionally anchored to heresy and who has a shackle
around his throat in lordship type stuff and all these other
buzzwords that nobody really knows how to put a finger on
because they're unbiblical, extra biblical words and terminologies. They're parenthetical philosophies
of men rather than direct, simple, childlike teachings of the word.
And when people get so enamored with the fame of it all, that
man could set himself on fire and say God said it was good
and people would think it was good. Friends, we cannot have that
type of relationship with people to the point that we would reject
to face the truth with them. Paul did not back up when it
came to Peter. Look at chapter 2, verse 11.
There's no way I'm going to get through all this. I'm going to
read the rest of the chapter. But when Cephas, who's also Peter,
came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face. And I know we read
this last week, because he stood condemned. For certain men came
from James. James was the pastor of a church
in Jerusalem. He was eating with the Gentiles.
But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing
the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted
hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led
astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct
was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas
before all of them, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and
not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet
we know that a person is not justified by the works of the
law, but through faith in Jesus Christ alone, so that we also
have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith
in Christ and not by works of the law, because by the works
of the law, no one will be justified. But if in our endeavor to be
justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ
the servant of sin? Certainly not. For if I rebuild
what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through
the law I die to the law, so that I might live to God. And
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the
flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of
God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ
died for nothing. And the very next thing out of
his pen is you foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you? See, Paul's
right back into this. He's showing now, he's not going
to show favoritism in the context of the, quote, brotherhood when
the brotherhood is becoming legalistic. Now who is he confronting? Peter. Who is Peter? Peter is one of
the inner circle of Jesus Christ. A close disciple. Peter is considered
by some of the world religions as the pinnacle of apostolic
authority. Peter, who after his renewal
and restoration by the Lord Jesus stood in Jerusalem, stood in
certain places and rebuked legalism and rebuked favoritism. Peter,
who would actually have the vision of the sheets, where he'd see
all these different animals, and all these different things,
and everything was good, and God gave him the vision to know
that all things were good, that nothing God has made is bad. And that there is, he then taught
that, I think it's Acts 11, Acts 12, somewhere there. He then
taught that very clearly to his Jewish brothers. And he said
to them, we should no longer frown upon meat because of how
it was prepared. Or food because of how it was
handled. Or who owned it, or who bought it. Now think about
that. The purity laws that we see in the scripture. It reminds
me a lot of Southern Evangelicalism. It reminds me a lot of the kinship
of many people before us, Baptists. It reminds me a lot of my upbringing. Is that there was this idea of
purity in many avenues of life and it was just handed down by
mouth and tradition from family to family to family insofar as
that in part of my household as a child If you picked up the
wrong type of fork at certain meals at the wrong time, you
were frowned upon like you were some kind of barbarian. You didn't
put your elbows on the table. You didn't drink your drink during
the meal. You know, things like that. You folded your napkins.
All this stuff. We used to have tea parties as
children, and you learned all this etiquette. Emily Post was
a common name in my childhood. And if you don't know who she
is, look her up. And I never got to eat at the
banquet of the kings, so none of that stuff really matters
anymore. Give me plastic forks. I don't have to wash them. Nope. But in our traditions, They're
no different than traditions of this day. They would take
those purity laws, and those laws were specifically for the
preparation of the meat and the animals and the killing of those
animals as a reminder of the severity of sin. Not as a rule
of saying, when you do like this, then you're really pleasing the
Lord. And if you look at it contextually
in the Bible, the Bible never gave the harshness that the Jews
lived by. Who gave the harshness? The rabbis. So rabbinic tradition,
the teachers of Israel, they were the ones who gave the harshness.
They were the ones who kept constantly pressing the issue of, oh, that
meat came from a Gentile market. You can't eat it. You can't buy
it. How was it killed? You can't
take it into your house. We're not talking about worship
standards. We're talking about eating at home standards. We're
talking about what's good for you, what's biblical, what's
godly. To the point where it affected
how they dressed, it affected how they spoke, it affected how
they stood in public, what they did with their hands, where they
put their eyes, whether or not if they got choked on some saliva
they could spit it on the ground. And Peter had been saved from
that dead work. He had been saved from the dead
works of Israel, from the dead works of Jerusalem, from the
dead works of Judaism. He'd been saved from the law
which always produces death. No one has ever obeyed God. And that's the point of all the
death. Imagine a worship service. If we got prepared to worship
as Jewish people in antiquity, we would have so much blood in
this place, it would be on our shoes. if we were the ones bleeding
out the animals. Now, I'm not saying it was like
a slaughterhouse, but, I mean, we can make a mess. You've never
butchered an animal, I've butchered many. It's not clean. You don't
get out there in your good clothes and skin a deer, or kill a pig,
or a rabbit even, or a bird. Wring a bird's neck. And prepare it for dinner. It's
going to mess up your clothes. It is a messy job. Imagine that
being the only option for you to truly stand in the presence
of God, is it had to bring something that had to be killed so you
could worship rightly. And your entire childhood, your
entire adulthood, your own children, then your grandchildren were
taught that, your great-grandchildren were taught that, and so on for
thousands of years. And then one day the true Messiah
comes, the King of the Jews comes, God in the flesh comes and He
says, you missed the point. Practicing this is not going
to set you right before Me. I am the Lamb. I am the sacrifice. My blood and my flesh satisfy
the wrath of God for you. You must believe fully in me.
All this was to point to me. Don't eat, don't touch, don't
taste, don't do. These regulations were a shadow of the things to
come. The reality that no one can be
justified before God outside of his mercy through his son,
you see. And Peter knew this and he preached
it. No longer do we have to deal with this, it's about grace,
it's about grace. Peter was a man born of God. But when he came to Antioch,
and he saw the group from Jerusalem, who looked like the group from
Jerusalem, he had a little fear in his stomach.
He had a little upset tension. He had a little anxiety and he
thought to himself, I've always sat with my brothers here. Now,
where were they sitting? We practice weekly the Lord's
table. We take a tiny piece of food
and a tiny little sip of the vine and we put it together.
We remember the death and the body of Jesus Christ, the shedding
of his blood for our sins. And that is so foreign from the
first century. in manner and method and process
and practice. It is so far removed from the
first century practice that they would not recognize it. They
would have no idea what we were doing. In first century, the church
there would take the feast that they would normally eat at home
and everybody would bring their lunch to the worship time. And those who didn't have, they
were allowed to eat. Sort of like when we have fellowship
here and inevitably we have people who forget or visit or don't
want to eat bologna, so they just look forward to seeing what
everybody's brought so we can share what we have. And at the
end of that love feast, they would take the scraps of bread
and the remnants of whatever they drank and they would do
the Lord's table. Just the remnants. Just like
Jesus took the Seder, the Passover meal, and took the remnants. So we skip the meal, we just
take the remnants. We bring the remnants and dole
them out. And we do it together. We sit
together, we invest together, and in the first century church
of Antioch, Peter and his people, they were always together, they
loved one another, but when he saw those really Jewish people
from the center of Judaistic life, though they weren't. He thought to himself, when these
brothers that come from James go back and tell the people of
Jerusalem that Paul of Tarsus, a Pharisee of Pharisees, a Jew
from the tribe of Benjamin, who has the name of the first king
of Israel, is sitting with Gentiles in the worship of God, I'm going
to hear it. Did you see how James was eating?
He had his elbow on the table, and he was picking his teeth
with his knife. He used his salad fork to stir
his tea, and so on and so forth. And people thought, oh, it's
uncouth. Uncouth. I heard that word when I was
10 and before I knew what it was. Just uncouth. That's in
civil. Don't act that way. Don't speak
that way. Articulate, son. I mean, you
know, even the teeth, son. It's OK. I mean, it's all right.
Imagine if that was part of how you thought and felt assured
before the Lord. And Paul's like, I don't want
to hear it. I don't want my reputation. We don't know what went through
his head. I mean, Peter. Thanks for looking at me. I don't know
what he was actually thinking, but I know it was fear. I know
it was this fear. So I'm not going to sit with
him. So he gets up. I believe he got up from his
brothers in his own fellowship. And Barnabas saw him, and sees
him glancing over there at these Jews. And he sits over there
with them, and Barnabas follows suit. And Paul's like, oh no
he didn't! You know, that kind of thing. And Paul is not going to deal
with it. When they came, he drew back
and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. Now some
people argue with me, see the circumcision party were there.
That's not what it says. It says he feared the circumcision
party. Some people would even argue,
well, James, he must have had a legalistic church. Read the
letter. It's not. Matter of fact, the whole occasion
of the letter of James is to rebuke the Jewish Christians
for showing favoritism and not having love for all people in
the faith. for giving a greater place at
the table. You notice how it always deals
with the table. The worship service, we never know how it was set
up. But after the worship was done, there was always intimacy.
It was always closeness and proximity, closeness and personal relationships,
closeness and accountability and investment in each other's
lives, a concern in prayer and giving and taking and receiving
the blessings of our labors for one another, the blessings of
our gifts as we give to the body, help the body, care for the body. And so James would rebuke that. He's not at odds with Paul at
all, unless you think James is writing it evangelistically,
which he's in trouble because he's condemned. Faith without works is dead.
Just like you can be married and have a terrible love. Just
like you can be saved but not read the Bible. It's like you
could be born again but feel spiritually dead. Work. Motivate. How does that
do? The means to which God works that in us is being in the Word,
being in prayer, and how we stay there is being together. So if
we're going to separate ourselves from one another because of some
disdain, there's a problem with it. It's one of the things, and
I might have mentioned this Sunday or last week, I can't remember,
but it's been on my mind and I try not to get upset, but I
get really angry. I'll be honest with you, I'll
be getting angry thinking about the reality that people who covenant
themselves with the body of Christ, and they put a lot of investment,
a lot of effort, Oh, this is it. This is the Lord.
This is the this is the reality. This is what I've been looking
for. And they go for it like dating, engagement, marriage,
courting, all this stuff. It's hard work. And then till
death do us part or until I get really ticked off or till you
smell bad or till whatever. You know what? I'm out of here. I'm out of here. That's why excommunication is
the means through which people remove from the church family
when they refuse to work out their differences. Because it
is a direct violation of the intimacy of the Lord's people. It hurts all of us. But that
is our flesh. And I think that's similar to
what Paul was, I mean, Peter was going, I'm just going to
put Paul on the block here. That's what Peter was going through.
He was overwhelmed a little bit for the first time. So this nature
of Peter's, the inclination that he has when he's tempted, look
what happened. He fell prey to temptation. He
sinned. And Barnabas was led astray by
their hypocrisy. It says, and the rest of the
Jews acted hypocritically. So not only when they saw Paul
and Barnabas, their leaders get up and move away from the Jews.
Could you imagine sitting with friends that you had been with
your entire life as a Christian, and then somebody else walks
in the door and everybody that's just like them gets up and leaves
you by yourself? Oh, I can't be... And you don't
know why, but you know why. Why? Because the laws of purity,
you could never eat with a Gentile. You could never speak with a
Gentile. You could never buy stuff that came from a Gentile
market if you wanted it to be pure. But they did it, and the rest
of the Jews acted hypocritically along with them, so that even
Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. The word hypocrite
means actor. It's a Greek word for actor. Why they have to transliterate
it into English, I don't know. Why not just say acting? By their
fakeness, by their posing. They're posers, that's what they
were doing. They were acting like they loved them, and when
they solved the problem, They just decided not. But it doesn't
mean that they were just worthless people. They've been acting all
the time. No, but at that moment they were hypocrites. They were acting
because they really didn't want to go and sit with the Jews.
But they felt like it was necessary. But when I, Paul, saw their conduct. Not, and it bothered me. Listen
to this. It was not Paul's being bothered
that made him do this. When I saw that their conduct
was not in step with the truth of the gospel. That God condescends to his people
who are sinners and he saves them by his mercy. This is what
the gospel is. Then how dare we who have been
given the grace of God not condescend to be with people. who we are
just alike with. I don't even know how to phrase
that correctly. I said to Peter, I know how he
goes back between Cephas and Peter, same word. Kepha and Petros. If you pronounce that in the
tongue. If you, Peter. And he says he does it before
them all. Why? Because I believe Paul wants them all to hear it.
He's not trying to embarrass Peter, he's trying to teach them
all. Jews, the Gentiles, and everybody
in between from every place, from Jerusalem and from Antioch
and all. He says to them, if you all who
are Jews live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you
force the Gentiles to live like Jews? What does he mean by that? It's a rhetorical question. He's
calling them out. He's saying, you don't live like
a Jew. You weren't living like a Jew yesterday, and you weren't
living like a Jew this morning, and now these Jews walk in, and you're
going to act like you live like a Jew? So you're going to force
these Gentiles to live like Jews too? If that's really what's
honoring to God, you've got to get everybody on the same page.
Because if it is true that purity matters in this context, then
everybody must wear the same garment. And that's a metaphor. It could
be circumcision, which is the circumcision party that he's
worried about. It could be who you eat with and who you don't
eat with, how you work things. I mean, Paul had to deal with
that in the church of Colossae, the Gnostics. Then he goes on, verse 15, we
ourselves are Jews. We are ethnic Jews. We are born
Jews. We are Jews. We are not Gentile
sinners because to the Jew, now he's not saying the Gentiles
are lesser people. He's just using the phraseology
that they are familiar with their whole lives. We're not Gentiles. We weren't
considered sinners. You notice that that's how the
Jews saw themselves. Yet we know, we as Jews know,
that a person is not standing righteous before God by the works
of the law. His righteousness is not through
his obedience. His righteousness is not through
his personal reform. His righteousness is not through
his moral standards. His righteousness is not through
his striving, his sincerity, his practices, his purity. but through faith in Jesus Christ.
We know that. We're not them, but so we also
now have believed in Jesus Christ. So now we're one in the same.
This is what Paul's getting at. These Gentiles who have been
sinners forever are no longer sinners because they are righteous
before God because of faith in Jesus Christ. We who know better
that the law and everything that was sent to us through Moses
was to point to the righteousness of God in Christ, we know better. in order that we have now believed
in Jesus Christ in order to be justified by faith in Christ
and not by works of the law. Why? Because by works of the
law no one will be justified. What's that mean? Is there a
hidden message there? I think it's pretty simple. No
one, not one person in the history of the world who was ever born of an earthly couple has ever been righteous before
God in their flesh. Only Jesus, born of a virgin,
is righteous because He is God and He is man. He created the
very body and the very womb through which He was born. The very body
for Himself and then came into the world. No one can be justified through
their obedience. No one can be justified through
their acts of worship. No one ever can find righteousness. But now he gets back to the point
here, verse 17. But if our endeavor, if our striving,
if our working to be justified in Christ, in our endeavor to
be justified in Christ, We too were found to be sinners. Is
Christ then a servant of sin? Now this is a complex thing. What in the world does he mean? Well, let's unpack it there.
Certainly not, he answers the question, certainly not. He says,
is Christ then a servant of sin? Is Christ a sinner himself? Is
he promoting sin? He says, certainly not. Absolutely
not. It is impossible. And then he gives a little bit
further explanation. So let me go to a couple more sentences here,
and then we'll go back and explain this in the context. For if I
rebuild, what's Paul saying? If I rebuild, if I take everything
that I tore down and I put it back together, I will prove myself
to be a sinner. I'll be seen as a sinner in the
eyes of God. Beloved, when we believe in Christ, we are no
longer sinners in the eyes of God. Understand that. We are not sinners in the eyes
of God if we are in Christ. We have been crucified with Christ.
That's how he closes this in verse 21. Or verse 20. I'm crucified with Christ. I'm
not a sinner anymore. I used to be a sinner, but if
I tear down, I mean, if Christ has torn down the law for me,
and all these regulations that I must follow, and I think that
there is some good and purity in them, then I rebuild them,
and I find my salvation in Christ. Christ has taught us not to do
this. Christ has taught us not to live
as a Jew. Christ has taught us not to disengage
with our Gentile brothers. Christ has taught us that all
things are good before Him. Christ is the one who's taught
us. Remember, the whole premise of this letter is that this is
God's gospel. This is taught to me by God.
This is taught to me by the Son of God, who by His grace has
carried me out of darkness and shown the light of the gospel
in me that I can see the face of God in reality. But if I build it back up, that
I myself am a sinner. So now let's go back to that.
But in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too are found to
be sinners as Christ and His servant of sin. In other words,
Christ is the one who taught you, Peter, to not do what you're
doing. So if you obey Christ and you
think it's a sin to eat with Gentiles, in the presence of
other Jews, but you're disobeying Christ and Christ told you to
do it, then Christ is a sinner. You see, that's what he's saying.
And of course that's ridiculous. Verse 19, For through the law
I died to the law. The law, we were in Romans a
long time, and we learned that through the law it always brings
death. We understand that the purpose
of the law is not to teach the church how to live. And I know
that the language of antiquity and some of the confessional
chapters that we have, friends, if you look at our website, you'll
see that we change some of that language. We explain that language. And that's why it's important
that our doctrine comes from Scripture, not from history. Because it may sound like the
world, but if it's not of Christ, we need to massage the wording
that it is true according to Scripture. We read everything,
and you should listen to everything that I say through the lens of
Scripture, not through the lens of tradition and history. I've died to the law so that
I might live to God, because the law is dead to me. If I live by the law, I'm judged
by the law. If I'm judged by the law, I die
by the law. But if I'm found in Christ, I'm
dead to the law. How many of you are scared of
snakes? One come crawling through here, you jump up in a hissy
fit. Now, I'm not necessarily scared
of snakes, but I respect pit vipers. That is not something
I want to experience, that poison running through my veins. I've
seen animals bitten and they don't make it to the truck. It's
a quick and dirty death. That's what the law is. When we stand before the law,
when we stand before God, subject to the law, we are bitten and
we are dead. But if we are dead to the law. Matter of fact, I think even
God uses the illustration of a serpent. Now, I'm not calling
the law a serpent, but the consequence of sin is death. Christ is victorious
over death. The enemy will strike the heel
of Christ, but he will crush his head. Friends, the consequence
of sin has been crushed by Christ. The head of its Power has been destroyed for
the elect, for the believers, for the church, for you. If you
are in Christ. And explains it then a little
bit more clearly in this assertion. So that I might live to God,
I have been crucified with Christ, Christ's death. effectually paid
for sin. And if we are in Christ, then
it is as if we died. With Christ. But the difference
is, if we are in Christ, he was not guilty of sin, though he
took on the guilt of sin in our place. So now, therefore, we
can live in Christ because he's alive today. So it is no longer
I who live, Paul says. but Christ who lives in me."
And what does this look like? How is it Christ who lives? Because
James Tiffins is not worthy of being resurrected from the dead
in his sinful flesh. But because Christ died in my
place and was not a sinner, he could not stay dead. So he died
where he didn't have to or wasn't personally responsible for his
own death in the sense of guilt. but he took the guilt of his
people on himself. He died satisfying the judgment
of sin, but he wasn't in himself guilty, so he could not stay
dead and he rose to life. So as we are in Christ, we are
free. The wages of sin is death, but
the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ. And so he goes on to say, And
now the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of
God who loved me and gave himself for me. So in this love is the
effectual reason why he gave. Jesus' love for you is why he
died for you. And His death for you satisfied
God's wrath for you. It is finished. Saving faith,
believing in Jesus Christ, is to believe in that proclamation. And in order to see and perceive
and grab hold of that, God must open your eyes to see it. Because if He doesn't, it's only
a matter of time before you slide one chair to the left. or one
chair to the right. And you may think that you're
firmly seated in one of these rows, but eventually, if you
slide in the same direction for long enough, you're going to
fall on the floor and you're through. And if we continue to just play
musical chairs with righteousness, thinking, well, I know I'm believing
in Jesus, but I can't quite put my hand on how I'm supposed to
be certain of the finished work of Christ, and you're going to
find yourself with nowhere to sit. Because you're going to try with
your flesh to appease God. You're going to try to obey in
a certain way that you can. And you're going to think that
you are. You're going to think that you're loving the Lord your
God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And you're
going to forget and have a blind eye to the fact that you've been
worrying all day about how you're going to pay your bills. Or how
you're going to overcome this sickness. Or how are you going
to pass this class? Or how are you going to get that
job? Or how are you going to deal with an unruly child? Or a crazy child? Or your children
might be thinking, how am I going to deal with my crazy parents? And then you're going to not,
in that moment, be concerned with the glory of God. You'll
never love Him as you should. There'll be times you'll think,
well, I've never worshipped an idol, but buddy, let somebody put dirt
in that new carpet. Let somebody burp at the wrong
dinner party. Let some kid say the wrong word
in front of the right people. Our toddlers have a real way
of speaking the truth, and they can embarrass us sometimes. Let
something happen that just is the button that you have to push.
And it gets pushed. And there will be idols. There
will be things that are precious to us that we don't even know
how precious they are until they get damaged or lost. And then
the furthest thing from our mind is the glory of worshiping Christ.
Friends, we're all idolaters. Well, I've never murdered anybody.
Yes, you have. Peter is very clear on that. When I want to
chop somebody in the throat for being dumb as a bag of grits, I'm a murderer. I don't want
to hurt them. I just want to get their attention. When somebody calls and says,
what about so-and-so? You hear about so-and-so? And I say, that
dirty, rotten scoundrel, I'm a murderer because I've gossiped.
And the list goes on and on and on and on and on. But religionists
and legalists and unregenerate Christian professors, not those
who teach in the seminary, but that would fit too, those who
profess to be Christian, they continue to hold fast to a partial
grace. that attaches their works and
their efficiency and claim that it's God working in them and
He's worked in me so hard I'm no longer tempted, then you're
not alive and you're certainly not alive in Christ. And we are taught how to put
to death the flesh. We are taught how to flee. sexual
temptation. We are taught how to not steal
and work with our hands. We are taught to tell the truth.
But so are the pagans of our culture. So so are the world
religions. So are the greatest atheists
that ever walked the earth, who are philanthropists and benevolent
beyond my means. To help people that I could never
help. But we never look at those things.
For our righteousness does not come through the works of our
flesh, through the works of the law, through any form of obedience.
It is through Christ alone. So when Paul, writing this letter,
understood that these Christians in Galatia had been inundated
with this attack of the Judaizers, who said, yeah, it's all about
Jesus, but if you really love Jesus, you better circumcise
your sons, he got mad. And rightly so. And then he says, look at verse
1, 2 and 3. And then we'll stop of chapter
3. Verse 1, 2 and 3. O foolish Galatians, who has
bewitched you? It was before your eyes that
Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you
only this. Did you receive the Spirit by
works of the law? Or did you receive God the Spirit
by hearing with faith? Are you such fools, having begun
your new life by God the Spirit, that you're going to make it
better by working in your flesh? Did you suffer so many things
in vain, 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 with faith? Just as Abraham believed God
and it was counted to him as righteousness, and it goes on. and goes on. Now then that it
is of those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And we'll
talk about that next week. And 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. So then those who are of faith
are blessed along with Abraham the man of faith. Beloved, it
is Christ alone who satisfies the wrath of God for us, because
of His love for us, He has saved you. Believe in the salvation
that is yours in Christ alone. Let's pray. Thank you so much,
Father, for this glorious truth. Lord, that even though this book
is a rebuke, it is so filling for my soul to be reminded, to
be let free even small and subtle ways in
which fleshly justification can slide in. No man can stand before you apart
from Christ and say anything but, Oh, great God, I am nothing
but a vessel of wrath. But God, in your mercy, you have
called us vessels of mercy. You have obtained for us justification
through Jesus Christ, your son, whom you sent in the flesh to
satisfy sins, to pay for the sins of your people, whom you
will save out of the fallen world. And we praise you for that. And
we love you for that. In Jesus name. Amen.