who's joining us on the live
stream. Again, I want to thank everybody
for the comments and the prayers and the thoughts and the cards
and all the things during the loss of my grandmother and my
aunties this last couple weeks that we've been gone. Thank you
guys. Last time we were together, we
was in chapter five and We looked at verses two down through six. Today we're gonna pick up in
verse seven, and Lord willing, work our way down to verse 12.
We'll see how far we get. But we'll look at verses seven
through 12. I'll go ahead and read that. Before we do, let's pray. Gracious
Heavenly Father, You are so kind, so great, so good, so gracious
to us. We come this morning, Father,
to honor and glorify your name. You are our Redeemer. You are
our Savior. You are the Prince of Peace,
the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, at whose name every knee
shall bow and every tongue shall confess that you are Lord. And so, Father, we come this
morning surrounded by the majesty that is Christ, to look into
the Word of God, to see you there. Father, we come to be edified
by the preaching of the Word. We come, Father, to lift up your
name. We come for the fellowship and love of the brethren. And
so, Father, we just pray that today, that in this worship,
you might meet with us by your Spirit, that you might help us
to worship you rightly, that you might help us, Father, to
hear and to understand, that you might enlighten your Word,
to our mind that we might grow in the grace and knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, I pray for these brethren
that are here, that you might build them up in the precious
holy faith, Lord. I pray that you might give them
understanding, that you might encourage them, that you might
give them direction in their life, Lord. I pray, Lord, that
you just be glorified today in everything
that we do. I pray that you might help me to minister the word,
Lord, with my throat hurting this morning. I pray that you
might give me the ability to make it through this message.
Lord, I pray that it might not be a hindrance to the listening
by anybody, Lord. And I just ask that you just
might make Christ be magnified today in what all we do and what
all we say. And we thank you for it. And
it's in Christ's name that we pray. We'll read verses 7 down through
12. He says, He did run well, who
did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? This persuasion
cometh not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth
the whole lump. And brethren, that's something
that we really need to keep in mind when it comes to the congregation. Okay. A lot of times you hear
me say, or you may hear other preachers of like faith in order
to say these things, but guarding doctrine within the church is
extremely important. If you'll do a study through
the New Testament, you'll find in many, many places the Holy
Spirit has given Paul to instruct the churches to guard their doctrine
closely, to watch their doctrine closely, that the doctrine does
matter. We look in modern churches today
and doctrine doesn't matter to anybody anymore. Matter of fact,
me and Kevin and Jacqueline and my wife was together last night
and we were talking about this very thing. People just does
not seem to care about doctrine. They just, whatever somebody
says, if they're standing behind one of these things, they think
that whatever that guy says is true and they just go with it.
But nobody is concerned with doctrine, it's all about oh how
much we just have this gushing love for God and this wonderful
communal love for everybody else. And that seems to be the focus
of their whole worship, the focus of their whole existence is that
we just have this ooey gooey worship feeling of coming and
serving God together and living, you know, the phrase I hear often
is doing life together and all that kind of stuff. Brethren,
The way that you love the brethren according to the word of God
is by doctrine, is by teaching doctrine, by observing doctrine,
by defending the doctrine, by encouraging each other in the
doctrine of Christ. That's how we show our love.
Our love isn't just showed by caring for each other in this
phileo love, this brotherly love type love. The way that we show
godly love is by doctrine. And so Paul here makes a statement,
a little leaven, leaven up the whole lump, and we're going to
deal with that, but pay close attention to that as we go through. He says, I have confidence in
you through the Lord that you will be none otherwise minded,
but he that trouble of you shall bear his judgment, whosoever
he be. And I, brethren, if I yet preach
circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Remember the Judaizers
were saying that this is the message of Paul too. They were
saying, hey, Paul's teaching this. But Paul was like, hey,
I've never been teaching that to you guys. And now he's saying,
hey, if I have preached circumcision, then why am I suffering persecution
at the hands of these guys? Then the offense of the cross
ceased. We'll talk about that in a minute
as well. They were even cut off, which
trouble you. And we'll stop right there and
see how far we get. Now, if you remember back, brethren,
what we talked about, and I'll try to recap just briefly here
what we talked about last time we were together. Last time we
were together, we looked at verses two down through six, and we've
seen that if we desire to follow the law for righteousness, for
justification, for preservation, if we decide to do that, then
the work of Christ doesn't profit us anything. Christ died in vain.
There's no reason for Christ to have even come if we can obtain
some sort of righteousness that's acceptable to God, some form
of preservation that will keep us with God, if we can do that
through our works or through our law keeping. And that's what
Paul said in verse two. He said, if you be circumcised,
Christ shall profit you nothing. Another way to look at that,
the other side of that coin, is if you're seeking justification,
righteousness, through law keeping, then what Christ did on the cross
in his life of obedience and his substitution for us in that
and his death and substituting for us in that, if You want to do this by the law,
then everything that Christ secured in His death, or His life and
His death, is going to be of no credit to you. Okay? Christ only credits His work
to those whom He has died. And for those whom He has died,
He gives them faith to look at what He has done. See, the faith
that Christ gives us as newborn children of God, He gives us,
and that faith will only rest in or receive the righteousness
of Christ alone. It doesn't look to works. It
doesn't look to self-righteousness. It doesn't look to our obedience
or our law-keeping. It looks to Christ and it rests
in Christ. And so what Paul said there,
was that everything that christ secured in salvation for his
people will not be credited to those who are seeking after righteousness
through law keeping through works and then in verse three he said
i testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is
a debtor to the whole law so he's reminding them remember
the law says that you gotta keep every bit of the law all the
time no breaking of any of it if you've broken any of it you've
broken all of it Okay? So if you say, I want to keep
the law here in circumcision to be justified before God or
to be saved, to be preserved as your walk through life or
whatever, he says, remember, if you choose to go that route,
you got to do it all the time and you got to keep every law,
not just a couple that you pull out of here that you like. You
got to keep every one of those. And the fact remains, as the
Bible teaches, for all have sinned. Everybody has broken the law.
Everybody has fallen short of the glory of God. And that no
man will be justified by the deeds of the law. That's what
the Bible clearly declares. Now that's not just a foreshadow
or a foreknowing of things that God's looking to the very end
and saying, well, nobody was able to keep the law Now that's
God telling us, declaring to us the fact of the matter. No
man will be justified by the deeds of the law because God
never, from the foundation of the world, never intended man
to gain righteousness, to be righteous, to do anything by
the work of his own hands. It never was a case of works.
We hear that, sometimes you might hear this by some people that
teach, in the Old Testament it was a covenant of works and that
they were saved by keeping all these laws and keeping these
works. They weren't saved by that. God gave them them laws,
but those laws to keep, they kept breaking. That's why they
kept having to sacrifice those animals. The daily sacrifices,
the yearly sacrifices, all these things were being sacrificed
over and over again because those people couldn't keep that law.
And God put all the weight of all those laws on them, and at
every turn they were... And they had all these different
things that they had to do. For this sin, you had to sacrifice
this. For this sin, you had to sacrifice
this. If you did this, you had to bring this as a sacrifice
or do this. And it was just a constant agitation
to people because they were continually reminded, we can't keep this.
That's why they said in Acts, this is more than anyone can
bear. This is a yoke. This is something that is a load
that no man can bear. The law was meant to crush us. So Paul here is saying, listen,
if you desire to try to gain righteousness by the law, you're
gonna have to keep it all. But remember, the Bible says
that by the deeds of the law, no man will be justified. So
we look at verse four, he says, Christ has become of no effect
unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, you are
fallen from grace. So he's telling these Galatians
who at one time believed in grace, believed in sovereign grace,
that Christ has saved us, everything that Christ did was laid to our
account, and there isn't no need for us to keep law for righteousness
or anything like that. And so, Paul said, listen, for
you who are coming under the law and everything, he said,
you've fallen away from the doctrine of grace, you've fallen back
into a doctrine of law that works. The very thing that the Pharisees
was steeped in. You've fallen back into religion.
You've fallen back into law keeping when the Bible is telling you
to look to Christ and it's about faith. Okay? And so, verse five,
he says, for we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness
by faith. So as we walk through life, we
don't walk in a work salvation, we walk in a trusting in what
Christ has done. So it's not about what we do.
You've probably heard this cliche all the time. It's not about
what we do, it's about what was done. Okay? It's not what we
do, it's what Christ did. And so, that's the gospel. That's what we live under. That's
what we walk by. That's the gospel message and
we obey, and we'll talk about this in days to come probably,
but we obey the truth by walking in the Spirit. And when you walk
in the Spirit, that is walking by faith, looking to Christ for
your righteousness. That's what walking in the Spirit.
A lot of people think walking in the Spirit is walking obedient,
in obedience, that, oh, I'm doing all these good things, you know,
I'm walking obedient. That's not what walking in the Spirit
means. The reprobate can do a lot of that, you know, As a matter
of fact, I've seen a lot of people that's fallen away from the faith
and now just into utter degeneracy, but at one time, listen, they
walked a lot more upright than I did. I mean, they were more
obedient to laws than I was and everything, but they have fallen
away and they've gone away, never to be seen and everything. So, walking in the Spirit is
walking by faith, according to the Word of God. And then in
verse six it says, for in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth
anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love.
So see there, Paul says, so when it comes down to it, it doesn't
matter if you keep the law or don't keep the law, it doesn't
matter because that is not the basis upon which Christ has saved
you. It is not based upon conditions,
whether you do or don't. And I would point you, this verse
almost is a parallel verse if you look at it, long enough this
verse is a parallel verse to Romans 9 where it says the children
having done nothing good or bad so that the purpose of God according
to election might stand God chose one and not the other it's almost
a parallel verse because here it says for in Christ Jesus neither
circumcision availeth anything good or uncircumcision bad availeth
anything but faith which worketh by love. Of course, we all know
no one gets faith without Christ giving it to us, right? He has
to grant us faith. We can't work that up in ourselves. So, last time we met together,
we've seen that Paul is again grinding these Galatians down
to the fact that this gospel, which is no gospel, that is being
preached by these men, is nothing more than works gospel and it
is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. And if you continue to believe
this and trust in this and hope in this for your righteousness,
you will miss all of what grace is about. And if you continue
in this unbelief, you will not be a child of grace, but a child
of Satan. Now, today we pick up in verse
seven, And he says, you did run well, who did hinder you that
you should not obey the truth? Now, he said, you did run well. What
does that mean? He said, there was a time after
you received the gospel, whenever I came to preach it, you loved
that truth. You desired that truth. You stood
in that truth. That doctrine was precious to
you. and you were running well. You were in this Christian walk
and doing well in it. But it said here, you did run
well, who did hinder you that you should not obey the truth? So somebody came in and hindered
them, slowed them down, sent them backwards from the race
that they were running, the walk that they were walking. Somebody
came in and hindered them with this untruth. And so he said,
you did run well, who did hinder you? And so that hindrance, whatever
that was that they came and did, of course we know by the scriptures
it was the preaching of the law here, specifically circumcision. That preaching of the law hindered
them that they weren't going forward in walking in the spirit,
but had reversed their course where they were looking back
towards works and walking in the flesh. See, whenever we're
not walking in the Spirit, which is a spiritual thing, right?
To walk in the Spirit is a spiritual thing. We do that trusting in
Christ. That's something that is done
through the Spirit. But whenever we desire to do
law-keeping, that's something that we keep in the flesh. So
whenever we desire to keep the law, that's walking in the flesh.
And so Paul here is saying, someone came in and slowed you down,
reversed your course from walking in the Spirit to walking in the
flesh. You're looking at a work salvation.
Now, we've already seen this in our passages once before. Look, if you would, back to Galatians
chapter 2, at verse 14. Galatians 2, 14. Paul wrote, But when I say that
they walk not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I
said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest
after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, Why compelst
thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?" Now, of course,
this was the retelling of the account back in Acts chapter
15, right? But what did Paul say here? He
said, whenever they were walking not uprightly according to the
truth of the gospel. So the truth of the gospel, or
walking in the truth of the gospel, is walking uprightly. Walking
in the truth of the gospel is the same as walking in the spirit. We're going to be seeing that
in days to come. And so whenever he says that
if you walk by the law and law keeping for righteousness, preservation,
perseverance, then you're not walking uprightly. To walk uprightly
is to continue in that course that you were set upon when the
gospel was preached of free salvation, of free grace, of imputed righteousness. Not imparted righteousness, imputed
righteousness. Righteousness that is outside
of you, righteousness that was freely given to you. That is
the walk that we walk. We walk trusting that as our
righteousness. That's what Abraham did. Whenever
Christ appeared to Abraham and told Abraham of the righteousness
that would be given to him by Christ Jesus, Abraham believed
God and he accounted it, the seed, Christ Jesus, the righteousness
of Christ, as his righteousness. And he walked trusting in that
righteousness and not his own. And so everyone who is born after
Abraham or is quote unquote, a child of Abraham, walks the
same way. That's why Jesus told the Pharisees,
you remember Jesus told the Pharisees, you know, they kept saying, hey,
we're Abraham's children, we're Abraham's children. And Jesus
said, hey, if you were Abraham's children, you would walk like
Abraham walked. You would trust me, but you're
trusting in your law keeping, you're trusting in your religion. He said, Abraham looked away
from those things, and he trusted in me. He looked ahead and saw
my day and trusted in me. He was glad to see that it was
by righteousness and not by his law keeping. He was happy to
see that. And so, that's what Jesus tells
all of us, just like the Pharisees. You know, if we are children
of Abraham, we will walk as Abraham walked, and that was walking
uprightly, walking in the spirit, walking by faith. So he says
here, you did run well, who did hinder you that you should not,
obey the truth. I kind of was looking at these
words, the Greek words behind these things, this week. That word obey there, it's kind
of strange. That word obey there is pythio,
and that word actually means, it's a verb that means to convince. It means to passively assent, to agree, to
believe, to have confidence in, to trust, And so that word obey
isn't a rigid thing that we have to go out and keep a condition,
but it's a passive thing that we receive and acknowledge. It's acknowledging the truth
of what has been done. See, that's what obeying the
truth is. It's not an active thing that
we do as far as keeping laws in the flesh, but it's a semi-passive,
and when I say passive, We do believe that is not necessarily
passive, but it is something that's granted to us. It's not
something that we can work of. It's a supernatural work. It's
a spiritual work. But what I'm trying to get across
is the fact that this word obey is a word that actually means
just to trust, to convince, to rest in. The Bible tells us that
we are to abide in Christ, to rest in Christ. Those words aren't
words of work. It's not words of labor. It's words of resting. And so
Christ here is telling us that we are to rest in the truth. If we are hindered, that we should
not obey the truth, then that means that we are no longer resting
in, being comforted in, being convinced by the truth. And what
was the truth? The truth was This righteousness
has been given to you freely. See, if I come to Kevin and I
tell Kevin, okay, Kevin, you got to do this, this, this, this,
this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. If you
do all this stuff, then I'm going to give you my righteousness.
Well, that's not good news because Kevin's going to find out quickly
that he cannot do this, this, this, this, this, this, this,
this, this. And so he may come back to me next week and he may
say, all right, well, you give me 25 things to do and I did
24 of them. And I said, well, I'm sorry.
The stipulation was you had to do all 25 of them. And if you
didn't do all 25 of them, then you've broken all 25, even though
you only broke one. And so Kevin, you don't get righteousness
because you didn't keep 25 of them. And just say that I'm a
good old guy. And I say, well, let's restart
it, Kevin. 25 things go this week. Keep
these 25 things. He meets me next week. Guess
what? He only did 23 of them. Well, I did 23, I only missed
a couple. I'm sorry, Kevin. The thing was,
you gotta keep them all. It's gonna become quick that
this is not good news. You mean God has given us this
so that we can keep it? No. He's given us this to show
us we can't keep it. But if I come to Kevin and I
say, Kevin, you know those 25 things that you see that needs
to be kept? I know that you can't keep them.
So guess what? This guy over here, he did keep
them. And because he kept them, I'm going to take what he did
and I'm going to apply that to you. So even though you didn't
keep them, I'm going to count you as keeping them because he
did. You see, that's what imputed righteousness is all about. That's
what the gospel is all about. Something has been done for us
that we cannot do ourselves. Grace is all about, it's not
just unmerited favor. We use that phrase so often to
the point that we lose the meaning of it. It is unmerited favor,
but the truth of the matter is, is grace is taking something
that is unattainable to the child of the flesh and giving it to
them and saying, here, this is yours. You don't deserve it.
You can't merit it. But I'm giving it to you because
you cannot do it. See, I used to hate... Among
doctors of grace believers, we have this little acronym called
TUBA. And, you know, it stands for Total Depravity, Unlimited,
or excuse me, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible
Grace, Perseverance of the Saints. Okay? Well, the I in there, Irresistible
Grace, I used to hate to talk about irresistible grace. You
mean God's gonna save me apart from my own will? God's gonna
drag me kicking and screaming and make me be a Christian and
all like that? That's not what irresistible
grace is. That's what people say. That's
a straw man that people throw up. That's not what irresistible
grace. Irresistible grace is God coming
down and giving you grace, giving you faith, giving you life, giving
you faith. Not asking you, but giving it
to you so that you can respond in repentance and faith towards
him, where if he did not do that, you never could or would do that. That's irresistible grace. Whenever
I've seen the biblical teaching of that and what it actually
meant, what it actually was, I begin to love irresistible
grace, where I used to hate it. I hated that. Irresistible grace
and limited atonement were the two things that, and it still
is today. Anybody you talk to about the
doctrines of grace, Those are the two big ones. But really,
the thing that they really are off on, on all of that, is total
depravity. If they don't understand what
the Bible teaches about our inability before God, the rest of that
stuff, we're not going to get any of the rest of it. If you
realize that we have an inability to do anything righteous in the
flesh, if you understand that we have no desire in the natural
man to come to the God of the Bible or to believe the gospel
of the Bible. We can believe all these other
false gospels that's out there of make yourself better, do yourself,
you know, choose your own destiny, where you want to go, heaven
or hell, or you know, all this other stuff. We can do that,
but we don't submit to the law, or excuse me, to the gospel of
Christ. We don't submit to His righteousness. We want to make our own. And
so without a supernatural spiritual change in in things without being
born from above. And when I say spiritual change,
the flesh never does change. Whenever we're brought to repentance
and faith, that doesn't mean that we change and now all of
a sudden we went from this to this. We still have the flesh
and it's just the flesh and it's always going to be the flesh
until the day that we die and put off the flesh. What happens
is, is now we've been born from above and we have an spirit that
lives inside of us, the Holy Spirit. And that spirit is perfect
and holy and righteousness and cannot sin. And that's what lives
inside of us. And that's why there's a battle
between us and the flesh. The Christian always having this
battle between each other. And so we live this life and
we continue having this battle of whether or not we can do this
or do this or do this or not do this. And it's a complete
and total battle. Our mind wants to do that. Our
spirit wants to do that, but the flesh is weak, it cannot
do that. And so to say that we're saved by doing that is completely
erroneous. We cannot obtain that by ourselves. And so irresistible grace is
God coming and doing something for us that we never could have
done apart from that. And that's a beautiful, beautiful
thing. So this word obey here, It's
a passive thing in the fact that it is a factual understanding
of what Christ has done for us and resting in the promise that
what He did has been applied to us and that that applying
of that to our record will also mean that through the rest of
our life until the day that we die or Christ comes again, that
He has promised to not only give us that righteousness, but throughout
the rest of our life, preserve us to continue to walk in faith
towards Him. That that preservation, that
perseverance, the perseverance of the saint, the pea and tulip,
Perseverance isn't some condition that we have to keep either.
There's two sides to the coin of perseverance. The other side
of that coin is preservation. The only way that the Christian
perseveres in the faith is because God is preserving them in the
faith. And so that's the promise that
Christ has given us. And so we rest in that promise
that not only has Christ saved us from sin and death, But Christ
has also promised that He would keep us, and throughout this
life, not hold our sins against us, not kick us out because of
broken fellowship, not turn His head away from us and say, no,
no, no, I can't do nothing for you, you know. Oh, I'm sorry,
you've lost your salvation. Have you ever heard anybody say
that you can lose your salvation? There's a lot of people that
believe that you can lose your salvation. And it isn't once saved, always
saved, okay? I grew up Southern Baptist Church
and that was kind of the main phrase, once saved, always saved.
And everybody that was not a Southern Baptist would always point the
finger, oh you believe that demon doctrine, once saved, always
saved. It's not once saved, always saved, it's once saved. It's what does it mean to be
saved? How are you saved? I always thought it was kind
of funny, I'm getting off on something here. I always thought
it was funny, as a Southern Baptist, I believe strongly in the doctrine
of eternal security. I believe that whenever someone
was saved, they could not lose that salvation. That God would
not let them go away. But yet I was so opposed to the
fact that God could sovereignly save somebody without their consent.
You know? Oh, he can keep me saved, but
I can't get saved by God. That was kind of crazy. Oh, it's
alright for God to overcome my will and make me stay saved.
I can't go away from it. But I can't say that about Him
bringing me to Himself. You know, I have to do that by
my free will. But once I get there, then God is not going
to let me go. Even if I want to. See, that
doesn't make sense. Inconsistency. That's what that
is. No, the reason that you don't
lose your salvation is because you had nothing to do with your
salvation. You can't lose something that you didn't find. Christ
found you. Christ saved you. All the work
was on Christ, and so for you to lose your salvation, God has
to undo all of what Christ did, not what you did, or do, or tried
to do. Okay? Okay, so, obeying the truth
is something that we do that is a resting in or is a reflexive
or a ascent towards what Christ has done. Does that make sense
to everybody? Now, the reason this is so, and
maybe, I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm a nerd, this
was so intriguing to me because that word obey there, see, whenever
I first looked at these words and stuff a long time ago, whenever
I was an Armenian, You know, that obey the truth meant pull
yourself up by your bootstraps and get out and start obeying
and serving the law, okay? But looking at this word this
week and reflecting upon what the actual meaning behind that
word was, is it to persuade, to convince us of something so
that we might rest in it. The next verse actually begins
that way. This persuasion, cometh not of
him that calleth you. See, there is a persuasion that's
going on here. The gospel is a persuasion, not in this, hey,
you need to, you need to start believing this. You need to start
believing this. And over the course of time,
someone finally says, all right, fine, I believe that, okay? I
can persuade somebody to do something if I just keep saying it over
and over again. I can tell Zach, hey, go out there and pick up
that shovel. And if he doesn't do it, hey, go out there and
pick up that shovel. Go out there and pick up that shovel. Hey,
go out and pick up that shovel. Go out and pick up that shovel.
And finally Zach goes, all right, I'll get out there and pick up
the shovel just so you'll shut up. The gospel doesn't work that
way. Some people think that if you
just barrage somebody over and over and over and over again
with the gospel, that finally they're going to say, all right,
all right. I'm reminded of a, a time whenever I, this was kind
of in the in between stages as the Lord was beginning to bring
me into the doctrines of grace. I'd already kind of begin to
see the doctrines of grace, but was still in an Arminian church,
still trailing with an Arminian singing group. And we was doing
a revival at a church. And anyway, at the end of this,
as I finished, I sat down and the pastor came and took over
and they started giving an invitation at the end of the, thing for
people to come to be saved. And we started singing a hymn.
And after we sang a verse or two of this hymn, this preacher
said, and there was two or three people that had come down to
the front and everything like that. But this preacher kept
saying, I know that there's somebody out there that still needs to
come forward and get things right with God and everything. And
we're just going to keep singing until that person comes down
here. And he's looking around everybody and staring right at
this young girl that was about three rows behind where I was
standing. Just kept staring at her. You know what you need to
do and we're just gonna keep singing. So we sang like five
or six, seven lines of a hymn. And he just kept standing there.
We just kept singing. He just kept staring. She just
kept standing there. And after about the 10th time
of singing the hymn, Then finally, this girl came down front, and
so they sit there and talk with her a little bit. Then after
it was all over, the preacher gets up, all happy, and he says,
praise God, you know, brought this girl up, says, oh, she's
come down to repent of her sins, and ain't this a glorious time?
And I'm thinking to myself, no, that girl came down there to
get us to let us go home. She came to stop this thing so
that we could go home. And so she knew you wasn't going
to quit until she came down. And she knew she was holding
up everybody else. And guess what? She wasn't back
there the rest of the whole week. He drove her away by doing that. See, that's not what I'm talking
about when I'm talking about persuasion, all right? Persuasion
isn't trying to talk somebody into something. Persuasion is
something that if we are a child of grace, what we are going to
cherish in our heart is the fact because we know that we can't
keep the law. We know we can't keep the law.
That spiritual life that's in us bears witness with our spirit
that we are guilty of sin and can't keep it. Whenever we see
that cherished gospel of free salvation, we love it, we desire
it. It's food, it's bread that we
feast upon. And so that becomes something
that we desire. And so this persuasion is not
a persuasion of a forceful push to do, but it is a reassurance
or it is a, as I said, a reflexively, uh, desired thing. We see that and it continues
to keep us resting in Christ. I've mentioned it here before.
That's why we continue to preach the gospel over and over and
over again. People that's already believe
in the gospel. If you believe the gospel and you're wondering,
why do you keep preaching the gospel? Well, the reason why
it's because as the song says, you know, it's, uh, um, it's,
I love to tell the story, you know, to those who know it best,
seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest. See,
we hunger and thirst for that gospel. And so Paul says here,
this persuasion to not obey the truth, but to be hindered and
walk that other way, to walk not uprightly. He says, cometh
not of him that calleth you. Now, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if Paul here is
talking about himself or if Paul is talking about Christ, but
I would say this, it can mean either way, but I would probably
say Christ. He says, this persuasion to walk
not uprightly in faith, but to walk in works, he said, this
didn't come from him that calleth you. Christ who called you to
repentance and faith, and that's what repentance and faith is,
brethren. Repentance in faith is not repenting of my sins.
Repentance is a change of mind of what the gospel is. A change
of mind about righteousness. I've changed my mind and I'm
repenting of thinking that I can keep righteousness for myself
and looking and saying that Christ is my only righteousness. That's
what true repentance is. Should we repent of sins? Yes,
we should do that. But that is not the primary meaning
of repentance whenever it talks about the Bible granting us repentance. Granting repentance is God granting
us a right understanding of the doctrines of Christ, the gospel
of salvation. And so he says that this persuasion
doesn't come from him that calleth you. It's not God that is telling
you these things. It's somebody else, and that
goes back to what he said back in the first part of Galatians
when he said that, if any man preach any other gospel unto
you than that ye received, let him be accursed. For do I now
persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please
men, I should not be the servant of Christ. And so what he's saying
here is the one who is calling you to this, the one who's hindering
you, by the way, The one who is calling you to walk in works
and law keeping, he's not a servant of Christ. Remember that. That's
not the gospel and those who are preaching that should be
accursed and they are not a servant of Christ. And then in verse 9 he says,
a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. Now why did he say
that? It seems like he just kind of
dropped that little phrase In here, out of nowhere... Paul, that's kind of weird. Why did
you do that? Why are you wanting to talk about leaven and bread
all of a sudden? Well, because that phrase was
a very well-known phrase, especially among Jews. What Paul is saying
here is, listen, This persuasion of those who are hindering you
is not something that we ought to take lightly. This persuasion
of law-keeping for righteousness is not something that you say,
oh, well, it's all right if they believe that, you know, we'll
just, you know, watch out for it and keep trucking. No, Paul
was saying, listen, There is this overall knowledge that a
little leaven will leaven the whole lump. It doesn't take much
leaven if you take some dough and mix up some dough and put
a little yeast in there. It doesn't take much of that
yeast to make that dough double, triple, quadruple, you know? And what Paul is saying is it
just takes a little persuasion of works religion in your congregation,
and it will try to live in the whole entire lump. It's going
to spread like cancer throughout the whole entire congregation.
People are going to be hindered by this. People are going to
be confused by this. People are going to be divided
by this. Remember, it caused division among the churches in
Antioch, and that's why Paul and Barnabas went down to Jerusalem
to talk with the apostles, and even when they got there to talk
with the apostles, It caused a division among the apostles
because there were some among the Church of Jerusalem who believed
that you ought to be circumcised and keep the law. And division
happened there. See, that's what Paul's saying.
I'm not just saying this by intellectual things, Galatian Church. I'm
telling you this by experience. I experienced it in Antioch.
Preaching of the law caused a division among the saints. Whenever I
went down to Jerusalem to talk to them about this doctrine that's
being spread by some of these Judaizers, He said, it caused
division there. The preaching of law for salvation
or for righteousness or for maintaining your walk in Christ, he said,
that is going to cause division among your churches. A little
leaven will leaven the whole lump. And that's why I mentioned
earlier, we have to be careful about the doctrines that we keep
in our church and about those who are spreading unbiblical
doctrine within our church, because it is a little leaven that can
leaven the whole lump. And I've seen that. I know of
a church over in Alabama, we have some friends that was going
to a church over in Alabama, and a little leaven of you get
baptized and once you get baptized, then that's what saves you. You're
born again when you get baptized. Some people call it baptismal
regeneration. A little bit of that teaching got into their
church and it spread like wildfire in there. And eventually the
majority of the church began to believe that, and so some
of the brethren, specifically our friends, they ended up having
to leave the church over it because it overtook the whole church.
And so that's why Paul is saying this, a little leavened the whole
lump. Is doctrinal issues worthy to
divide over? Absolutely. Absolutely. I understand that in modern churches
today, the goal is to keep as many people as you can keep in
your church. I understand that the goal of
the modern church is to just be as loving as you can so that
nobody will feel bad and nobody will go away. But again, as I
mentioned before, biblical love to the brethren in the scriptures,
and you can find this in John's epistles. It's in 1 John, I believe. You can find that doctrinal love
for the brethren is showing doctrinal care for the brethren, is encouraging
proper doctrine, correcting in doctrine, reproving, rebuking,
and encouraging in the true gospel. That's what biblical love is
about. That's why we are so strong on
doctrine. That's why we push doctrine here
and we've seen people come, we've seen people go, and the reason
why a lot of times sometimes people go so quickly is because
of the doctrine. It's a hard doctrine. I mean
they even told it to Jesus. Jesus preached the doctrine and
they came and said this is a hard saying and who can keep it? And many went away from Jesus
and never walked with him anymore, of his disciples. They never
walked with him again because his teachings were so hard. Brethren,
this teaching of imputed righteousness for salvation and righteousness
alone, this thing of Jesus doing it all and us not having to keep
conditions is a hard teaching. The natural mind cannot fathom
it, it won't receive it, it thinks it's foolishness. And people
say it all the time. You mean to say that we don't
have to do something to get saved? We at least got to reach out
and grab it. Brethren, it's all free. The
Holy Spirit has been given to us that we might know what's
freely been given to us. So a little leavened with a whole
lump. We'll do a study sometime on keeping doctrine and the importance
of doctrine. know that that is all over the
epistles of Paul that we are to keep. He told Timothy, watch
your life and your doctrine. He said, watch over the doctrine.
Now verse 10, I have confidence in you through the Lord that
ye will be none otherwise minded, but he that troubles you shall
bear his judgment, whosoever he be. So Paul here is saying,
I have confidence in you through the Lord." He's saying, I know
that if you're truly a child of grace, that you're going to
continue to think gospel-wise. You're going to think as in the
gospel and not in this other junk that's been taught to you.
He's saying, listen, I have confidence that those who are the children
of grace are going to see the error of these men's ways, the
error of this doctrine that's been preached, and you're going
to turn back towards what you were called unto. And we have
that confidence, don't we, brethren? We don't just trash people. And
even whenever I say we've got to guard our doctrine closely,
and we've got to watch our doctrine, and we've got to, if the leaven's
there, get the leaven out, there still is a loving way that we
do that. How do we do that? Well, the Bible tells us that
we are to, with meekness and longsuffering, correct these
brethren in hope that God would give them repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth. We do that by long-suffering.
We do that by meekness. We don't come all propped up
like a peacock, like we know everything. You got it wrong,
you got to get out. I've seen so many churches that
have wounded so many true Christians who have just not come to the
knowledge. God's not revealed those things to them yet, but
yet a church, because it wants to keep doctrinal purity, has
done it the wrong way. They've attacked them so harshly
and treated them so coarsely that they went away hurt and
they don't want to go back to churches because of that. But
if we do things in a loving way, there's a loving way to correct. There's a loving way to rebuke.
There's a loving way to rebuke. I was telling Kevin last night,
you know, there's been many times that men in this church and other
men that I know has come and said, hey, you might want to
take a look at something that you preached here. And you said
this, but look at this verse over here and this verse over
here. And I've come to realize, hey, I was wrong on something.
And I was thankful that those brethren came and corrected me.
But they didn't come down and say, hey, ding dong, you shouldn't
have done that. Why did you preach that? Well,
if you preach that, I can't be your friend anymore. You're not
coming to my church anymore. If they would have done that,
I would have I told you the story about my friend J.C. Fulton. He's my best friend now. But
it wasn't long after I first met him. I'd only met him like
one or two times. We were on a Baptist symposium
forum, email forum together. But I had only met him in person
like one time. And I was at a bookstore and
I came up. I was still coming into the Doctrines
of Grace and still trying to learn a bunch of things. He came
up, I came up to this bookstore, and he was there, and another
guy that I'm friends with was there who owned the bookstore.
And they were outside, and they was talking about the Lord's
Supper. And I grew up in a church that believes in open communion,
that as long as you call yourself a Christian, you can take the
Lord's Supper. And so I'm kind of walking up, and Bro. JC, he's
talking about how that the Lord's Supper is only for the local
church, and that it's for the members of that church. I come
walking up, and I hear that, and I said, man, y'all don't
know what you're talking about. And I said, you know, if you're
a Christian, you have the right to take the Lord's Supper wherever
you want, whenever you want. Brother JC, only one time, he
said, brother, I believe you're in error in there. Here, let
me show you why. And he got a Bible off the bookshelf at that bookstore,
and he opened it up, and he took me in here, and he said, if you
believe what you believe, he said, what about discipline,
church discipline? And I said, well, what about church discipline?
And I actually said this, I said, what does church discipline have
anything to do with the Lord's Supper? And he just kind of looked
at me and said, brother, he said, I think you really need to take
the Bible and go back and study the Lord's Supper. Study what
Paul was writing about in Corinthians. And study about what happened
with Christ and the importance of the elements of, he said,
I really think you need to study that before you make such assertions.
And so he gave me some stuff and pointed me and was showing
me some things in there. And I kind of went away. I was
kind of quiet. Went away and I began to study
it. And the Lord showed me that I was wrong. You know, I love
that brother for doing that. And now he's my best friend.
Now we argue about a whole lot of stuff. Most of the time I'm
right, though. I'm just saying that in case
you wasn't. We go back and forth on stuff.
And listen, truly, truly, truly, Him correcting me, and I believe
also my correcting him, that we have edified each other in
a way that's biblical. Not patting either one of us
on the back. Both of us have a long way to go before we're
ever worth anything. Just saying that whenever you
do things the biblical way, it's always good. God designed it
that way. When God designed church discipline,
He said the purpose of church discipline isn't to be harsh
on the person leaving. It's actually designed so that
if they truly are the children of God and you put them outside
of the church, that that will convict them, bring conviction
to them, sorrow to their heart of being removed from the body
of Christ and causing them to repent and come back. See, the
whole purpose of church discipline and correction and rebuke is
to regain that brother, regain that sister. And so Paul here
is saying, listen, I have confidence in you through the Lord that
you will be none otherwise minded. You're not going to listen to
these fools. You're going to follow after the gospel. But
he said, but as far as those fools who's been preaching this
stuff to you, he that troubles you shall bear his judgment,
whosoever he be. And I brethren, if I yet preach
circumcision, as they say that I am, He says, why do I yet suffer
persecution? Listen, whenever you preach the
doctrine of Christ, the true gospel, you're going to suffer
persecution. The churches that you were in
aren't going to want you in there no more. The pulpits that you
preached in, they don't want you to preach in them no more.
The friends that you had, they may not be your friends much
longer. The family that you're in, there may be a division.
They may love you because of who you are, but there is division
there because there is not uh... there is not uh... uh... communion
in the gospel there is not a there is not a fellowship in the gospel
there he says if i preach circumcision
why do i yet suffer persecution then is the offense of the cross
ceased he said listen the offense of the cross remember jesus talked
about this other parts of scripture talks about this. It says that
the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, that
those who are of the natural mind cannot receive it. It's
foolishness to them. But Jesus also said that, you
know, that he was a stuff that he's a stumbling block. That
stumbling block is something that someone falls over, trips
them up. They don't like it. You know,
the Bible says this person who's a stumbling block to the Jews
and foolishness to the Gentiles, to the children of God, whether
Jew or Gentile, he is the cornerstone. He's the foundation. He's the
thing that holds it all up. He's the thing upon which all
of it is built. Whenever Peter was at, Jesus
said, who do you think I am? Peter said, thou art Christ.
Jesus said, that's true, and on this rock, and he wasn't talking
about Peter. He said, on this rock, the fact
that Christ is, Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior,
upon this rock shall he build his church. The foundation of
all things as it pertains to the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus is placed upon Christ Jesus. Not your will, not your desire,
not your choosing of your destiny. It's upon Christ. He is the chief
cornerstone, the foundation, the one who holds it all up.
Everything's built on that. If it's not built on Christ,
it's going to fall. The Bible gives that parable
of that story. If you build your house upon
sand, what's going to happen? It's going to wash away. Paul says, listen, I'm confident.
The things that are built on Christ is going to stay. And
if you're a child of grace, you will hear the gospel, believe
the gospel, you'll turn back away and repent from this nonsense.
I don't preach this nonsense. If I did, I wouldn't be persecuted
like I am now. And he said, listen, if I'm preaching
something that is not the gospel, then the offense of the gospel
has ceased because the offense is the freeness of the gospel.
That's what's offensive to the religionist, to the self-righteousness,
to the self-righteous. The offense is that I have no
hand in my own salvation. Now, let me ask you, you who
believe the doctrines of grace, Who gets riled up the most? Whenever
you start talking to a friend or a family member about the
doctrines of grace, what riles them up quicker than anything
than whenever you tell them that they don't have any choice or
any will in their salvation? They don't even get riled up
as much about Christ only died for the elect. They don't even
get riled up with that as much as they do whenever you tell
them you didn't have anything to do with your salvation. You
didn't choose Christ. You start talking about free
choice, listen, the gloves come off. Why is that? It's because that is our natural
bent. That's what the Adamic nature,
our natural nature desires is a righteousness that we provide
ourselves. Adam and Eve, whenever they sin,
they thought they could cover that sin and make good with God
by covering themselves. God wouldn't have nothing to
do with it. They thought they could be as God and choose their
own path. God said, no, you're not going
to do that. The day that you eat that, you're
going to die. You're not going to become like God, you're going
to die. See, brethren, it's all about
what Christ did. It's all about His work. And
so Paul here says in verse 12, harsh. Matter of fact, this is
some of the same harshness we've seen in chapter one, whenever
he said, that let them be accursed. He said here, I would, they were
even cut off, which trouble you, that word cut off there was a
phrase that they used in regards to a father and his son when
his son had dishonored the family or had went out and become dishonorable. He was like, I would rather that
God would just kill my son than my son to continue to bring dishonor
upon himself and upon our family. Paul is using that same phrase.
I would rather that these Judaizers that is preaching this law gospel,
who is leading the children of God astray, I would rather that
they be completely cut off from the land of the living than for
them for another minute to trouble the people of God. That's harsh,
isn't it? That's a harsh saying. No different
than what he said in chapter one. that if any man preach these
things, let him be accursed. Let him be accursed. Is it important? Yes, it is important. If you
don't understand it, keep studying the Word of God. Pray that Christ
would give you understanding of the difference between law
and grace. Pray that Christ would give you
the right understanding about what it means to walk in the
Spirit. To walk in obedience to the truth. that he might give
you the ability to discern between the spirits that are preaching
law and the spirits that are preaching grace. The Bible tells
us that we are to discern the spirits, right? To know whether
or not they are from God or from Satan. Well, I'll just stop right
there, brethren, because as we move into 13, there's some other
things that kind of break from what we're saying here, and I
want to pick up with that. Does anybody have any questions
or any comments? Anything you'd like to add or
scripture that might have went well with what we talked about? By the way, I forgot to mention
in that those two words obey the truth, that word obey I told
you was pithio. That word persuasion that was
in verse 8, that comes from that root word which is pithio. So
that persuasion, that obeying, that is linked together there,
it just wasn't my scrambled hermeneutics. It was actually, it's actually
the root word of that other word obey, which is to passively or
to reflexively look at what Christ has done for us, to live in faith
in what Christ has done, trusting in Him and looking to Him as
our righteousness. All right, does anybody have
anything to add? All right. Lift down. Lord, we thank you
for this day and we thank you for your grace once again. We
thank you for your love and your mercy. We thank you for the blood
of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. We thank you for the
Holy Spirit who comes and grants us repentance and faith to trust
in Christ. We thank you for the gospel.
We thank you for the word of God that you have preserved for
us and that you will continue to preserve for us as long as
time continues. that we, your people, whether
it be in this time period or time periods in the future, will
always have a testimony, a witness of who Christ Jesus is. We know
this book from cover to cover is about him and about his gospel. And so, Father, I pray that you
would continue to help us proclaim it, to keep true to it, to preach
it faithfully. I pray, Father, that you would
keep us in the faith to believe it, Spread it on to future generations,
Lord, those who you bring us into contact with. I pray, Lord,
that you would continue to minister and work within our church, that
you might help us, Lord, in this town to be a witness and a light
for you. I pray, Lord, that you bring others who believe this
gospel. They too might come alongside of us to labor in the gospel
and to worship together, to edify one another, and to build each
other up in the most holy faith. Lord, we do continue to pray
these things and ask Lord that you just might bless it. And
it's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.