To comprehend the Great Three
One Is more than highest angels can Or what the Trinity has done
From death and hell to ransom man But all true Christians,
this may boast A truth from nature never learned That Father, Word,
and Holy Ghost To save our souls are all concerned The Father's
love in this we find. He made His Son our sacrifice. The Son in love, His life resigned. The Spirit of love, His blood
applies. ? Thus we the Trinity can praise
? ? In unity through Christ our King ? ? Our grateful hearts
and voices raise ? ? In faith and love while thus we sing ?
Glory to God the Father be, because he sent his Son to die. Glory to God the Son that he
did with such willingness comply. Glory to God the Holy Ghost,
who to our hearts this love reveals. Thus God 312 sinners lost, salvation
sins procures and seals. There'll be probably a lot of
people surprised that we just sang that song because they do
not think that I believe in the Trinity, but that's not true. I just believe it different than
the Athanasius Creed and the creeds of the old confessions
of the Catholic fathers, quote-unquote fathers. I don't believe it as
they have put it forth, but as the scriptures have put it forth.
But we do believe in a three-one God, and that that God is manifested
and found in the person, the only person, Christ Jesus. But
we do believe in the Father and the Word and the Holy Ghost and
their testimony and their ministry as the Godhead. They are the
one God, the Spirit God. We believe that that Trinity
of the Godhead has been record bearers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ has made that God known.
That three-one God known. And so, that's what we hold to
and preach. So, like I said, it's probably
surprising people believe we sing those songs, but if you'll
notice there, even the songwriter, Joseph Hart here, he even mentioned
the same thing whenever he said, thus we, the Trinity, can praise
in unity through Christ our King. We do give praise to that three-one
God in the person of Jesus Christ. And that's what we preach. We
preach Christ and Him crucified. We preach Christ, whose name
is above all names. And at the name of Jesus, every
knee shall bow. There's no other name given among
men whereby we must be saved. It's Jesus. So we preach Jesus
and we teach Jesus. He is manifested God in the flesh. Praise and glory to Christ this
morning. Turn with me now, if you would,
to a hymn number 356. 356. We'll sing this to the tune of
Jesus, lover of my soul. In 356. Does the gospel word proclaim,
rest for those who weary be? Then my soul put in thy claim,
sure that promise speaks to thee. Marks of grace I cannot show
All polluted is my breast Yet I weary am, I know And the weary
long for rest Burdened with a load of sin Harassed with tormenting
doubt Hourly conflicts from within Hourly crosses from without All
my little strength is gone Sink I must without supply. Sure upon the earth there's none
Can more weary be than I. In the ark the weary dove found
a welcome resting place. Thus my spirit longs to prove,
rest in Christ the ark of grace. Tempest tossed I long have been,
And the flood increases fast. Open, Lord, and take me in, till
the storm be over, past. Does anybody have a song they'd
like to sing? 521. 521, or excuse me, 521. So, worship the king. 521. Thanks be to my head, the great
king of kings. My life from the dead, the death
of my sins. Who took all my woes and was
made sin for me. Who died and who rose and from
sin set me free. ? Spirit He sent to soften my heart
? ? The old veil to rend and life to impart ? ? To bring me
from darkness to light in the Lord ? ? To kill me to Moses
to sin and the world. Thus I through the law, dead
to the law am, yet married am I to Jesus the Lamb. This union is sealed, all heavens
agree, From sin and from Moses, I henceforth am free. My soul then rejoice, let Christ
be thy song. With heart and with voice, with
lip and with tongue, before men or angels, Sing, worthy is the
Lamb of unceasing praises forever. Amen. It was right along what we've
been preaching in. All right, anybody got a song they'd like
to sing? from Romans chapter 8 and Galatians chapter 4 Romans
chapter 8 and Galatians chapter 4 I know this kind of becomes redundant
for you guys who are here every week but for those who watch
over facebook or listen to sermon audio sometimes they don't listen
week by week by week and they just kind of cherry pick things
to listen to so i try to reiterate a few things recapitulate would
be the 50 cent word you want a nice nice big word to show
off how smart you are, you can say recapitulate. The reason I go back and I go
over some of the same things every week, especially why we're
doing what we're doing or what verse we're in and going a little
recap of what we talked about the week before is like I said,
some people just cherry pick through the messages and just
like jump in at number two or number three or number four of
a series. And so they don't hear maybe
what I said the weeks before that. And so sometimes I got
to reiterate why we're here, because we are in, if they're
at Serum Audio, they're seeing that this is in the series of
Galatians. We're in our exposition of Galatians,
but we've been spending several weeks in Romans. And the reason for that is in
verse nine that we're in currently, it says, but now after that ye,
Galatians chapter four, verse nine, that is, But now, after
that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, in other words,
now that you have been converted, that you are a child of grace,
that you are, of course they didn't become a child of grace
at this time, they were a child of grace before the foundation
of the world. However, he says, how turn ye again to the weak
and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire ye to be in bondage?
So, Paul here is dealing with the fact that these Galatians
have listened to the Judaizers who have come in and bewitched
them with this ear-tickling message of, you gotta keep the law to
be right with God. And that appeals to the flesh
of man because we like to do things and be rewarded for it,
right? We like to be rewarded for it.
I got kids here that worked at Dairy Queen. Whenever they do
certain tasks, they get stars beside their name. And sometimes
they get nominated as employees of the month. They get rewarded
for doing good things. And so they do good things, why?
So I can get that star up there. So I can be chosen as the employee of the month or whatever.
So we like to be rewarded, okay? That's just our human nature.
We like to be rewarded and we like to have a little pride tickled. You know, I can be proud. I did
this, you know, all on my own and everything. Well, the preaching
of the law, that's where it stings us. That's where it gets us,
is it entices us that this is holy. This is God's holy word. This is God's, this is God's
law that he has commanded for us to do. And then what happens
is, is the flesh comes in and thinks that in self-righteousness,
it can keep that law, it can obey the law, and thus attain
a righteousness of its own, instead of, which it cannot do, look
away from itself. See, the flesh cannot look away
from itself. It can't look to anything but
itself. I don't know if you kids remember when Pops was alive,
he used to say this a lot whenever he preached. and I've since used
it also in my preaching. The flesh will do anything. Your flesh will do anything.
Even be religious just to get its way. The flesh just wants
its way. It wants to be in charge. It wants to get the accolades.
It wants to be quote self-righteous. It wants to be the righteous
one. To have all the glory given to it. And so thus the flesh
will do anything to get its way, even act religious. It will do
all the religious things. It will follow all the religious
rules that it can try to follow. It will do all these things and
there will be an outward form of morality or an outward show
of morality, not an accomplishment of it, or an outward show of
obedience. We can refrain ourselves. People
can stop drinking to drunkenness. They can stop taking drugs into
psychoticness. you know, into being out of their
mind and things like that. And there is people that can,
you know, quit cheating on their spouse. They can, you know, quit
being greedy and start being generous to people. They can,
you know, people can have these moral outward changes, but never
be a child of grace. So that's never what happens
in the outward man and the fleshly man can't ever be our point of
assurance. that we are Christ or that we
are obeying the gospel. Because the faith that is given
to us in Christ Jesus doesn't look to the outward. Matter of
fact, the Bible says that faith is the evidence of things unseen.
Okay, that these are things that are not seen. It's not things
that we do outwardly and show outwardly. It's those things
that is worked in us by the Holy Spirit inwardly that are the
works of God. that were ordained for us to
walk in. It is those things that are given
for us and that faith that looks to Christ alone and away from
self. And so Paul here is telling these
believers, you know, you're Christians, you're children of Christ, you
are born from above, and with that the gospel was brought to
you and you received that gospel and now because these guys have
come and tickled your ears and in a sense has emboldened the
flesh or has given fuel to the flesh to think it can keep a
righteousness before God, now you're beginning to listen to
that and you've been bewitched by that and you've turned away
from the gospel and you're turning to a false gospel, you're listening
to false teachers. These aren't servants of Christ,
okay? They're the servants of the devil.
And so you're listening to them and you're not listening to Christ.
And so now, you who were free from the law, because you've
been married to Christ, when Christ died, we read that, remember,
last week, that by the body of Christ, that we are dead to the
law, okay? So the law has died and we're
no longer married to the law, we're now married to Christ.
We're married to him. And so he's our husband. And
so now we're looking back and trying to go back to another
husband. That's why Paul was saying, why
do you again want to go back to the weak and beggarly elements
where to you desire to be in bondage? And so we've been asking
the question, Why, Paul, do you call God's holy law being in
bondage? That doesn't sound right. Being
under God's law, and I mentioned it to you last week, a lady had
called me a heretic because I preached that we are not under the law
as a rule of life. And she called me a heretic for
that. And I won't mention her name,
but she's all over Facebook calling out heretics of all kinds. Most of them aren't heretics,
but some of them are. But anyway, I'm sure her intentions are good,
but she's just kind of way off on some things. Anyway, she was
calling me a heretic, and as I mentioned last week, the Bible
actually says for those... I mean, she specifically said
that she believes that we are under the law as a rule of life,
and the Bible says for those who want to be under the law,
that they are under a curse. And so we see that's why Paul
was telling them, hey, if you want to go back and be under
the law for your rule of life, then you're going back under
a curse. You're going back into bondage. You're going back and
becoming an adulteress because you've been married to Christ
if you're a Christ child. And so that's why we've been
looking back into Romans 6 and 7 and now into 8. We've been looking at what Paul
has been preaching about the law and what the purpose of the
law is. and what the law actually does
for the child of grace and what it is and how we should, you
know, how should we interact with the law or what our mind
thought should be about the law and see what God says about it
and why Paul is so adamant about preaching to these people about
it's very dangerous for you to preach people to be under the
law for a rule of life or to follow the law as a rule of life,
it's dangerous for that because the law was not meant for that. That was what the law was not
meant to do. If I go out and I want to, you
know, work on my car and everything, I'm not going to take a jackhammer
and go out and work on my car. That jackhammer was not meant
to work on a car, okay? What am I going to do? I'm going
to either hurt myself or I'm going to damage the car. When
we preach the law, we're either going to hurt the listener or
damage the listener or ourselves for trying to follow that, okay?
All it can bring is cursing. So we've seen a lot of things,
and I won't go back. If you are listening, you can
go back and listen to all the different things that we've already
talked about. But today, the point that I want us to bring
up is in Romans chapter 8, and if you look there with me, we're
going to be looking at the first few verses. In Romans chapter
8, And one of the reasons Paul is
warning the Galatians about listening and following after the Judaizers,
or those who preach law for life, law for acceptance, law for maintaining
salvation, law for righteousness, is because the law in and of
itself, because of our flesh, is weak. And we'll see that here.
Look at verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after
the spirit." Brethren, whenever we walk by the law, we are walking
by the flesh. It's keeping outward things. That's what the law is intended
for, is outward appearance, is to keep outward things. And if
we walk by the flesh, those outward things, it's not gonna please
God. The Bible says the flesh cannot
please God, okay? the body of flesh that we have,
it cannot do anything or produce anything that is a spiritual
nature that is pleasing to God. Therefore, anyone who walks after
the flesh, after the works of the flesh, the things that the
flesh can do, if you walk after that, you're not walking in the
spirit. To work in the spirit or to walk
after the spirit is to walk after the gospel. Not the law, but
the gospel. We walk after the gospel, which
the gospel tells us that salvation was already finished for us,
front to back, first to last, all of it, complete. Every bit
of salvation is finished in what Christ Jesus has done. And so
to walk in the spirit is to walk by what the law of the gospel
says. The law of the gospel says to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. to look to Him as your righteousness. It doesn't say to keep the law
for righteousness and say, thank you, Jesus, for dying for me.
Now I want to take up the law and try to keep it so that you'll
be pleased with me. Jesus did everything for you.
And all the law, or excuse me, all the gospel tells us to do
is look unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith,
the one who'd give us eternal life, the one who took all of
our sin, the one who took all the wrath of God, the one who
lived, who died and was buried and was resurrected on the third
day, that is your salvation. Nothing else. No condition that
you have to meet. No law that you have to keep
is your salvation. Christ was your salvation. And
so what the gospel tells us is that we are to believe upon the
Lord Jesus for our salvation. To believe upon Him. Not to get
saved. We don't believe to get saved.
We believe because we have been saved. and the gospel is telling
us to look to Jesus. Look to Jesus, just trust in
Jesus. And that's how we walk. So we
walk trusting that Jesus is our salvation, not our law keeping,
not our doing good, not our being a righteous person in our flesh,
okay? So there's no condemnation to
them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the spirit. That's a condition. Well, not
a condition, That's a statement of fact. Those who have no condemnation
to them are the children of God. And the children of God are those
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. They are
walking in obedience to the law of the gospel, not the law of
Moses. Now look at verse 2. For the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death. So the law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and
death. Okay? The law of Moses brings
sin and death. There would be no sin if there
was no law. The sin is the transgression
of the law. So there would be no sin if there
wasn't any law. There'd be no imputation of sin
if there was no law that was to be broken. Okay? So, the law
of sin and death, sin and death came in by transgression. Transgression. Breaking the law
is what brought sin and death in for Adam. Okay? Therefore,
every one of us, when we break the law of God, we now are worthy
of sin and death. Now we're worthy of that because
of our flesh, because of our nature, because of our inherited
nature in Adam, okay? But brethren, we are worthy of
sin and death. That's the wages of sin is death. And sin is the transgression
of the law. So for The law of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of
sin. So if you're a child of grace, you are no longer under
the law of sin, which says that you must die, and you're no longer
under death that says, when it's all over, that you're going to
be eternally separated from God. We are not going to experience
that. Okay? That's why it's such a beautiful
thing to know there's no condemnation. There is no payment of sin and
death for us. Look at verse 3, though. Why? For what the law could not do. Now, I don't know about you guys,
but that is very simple to me. I'm a very simple-minded person,
okay? I'm not a genius. I'm not a theologian. I'm not even a great preacher.
But that seems very simple to me. As far as I can understand
it, that says that the law could not do something. The law couldn't
do something. So let's find out what could
the law not do. For what the law could not do
in that it was weak through the flesh, okay, so the law doesn't
work because of our flesh, right? That's why the law doesn't work.
The law can't make us whatever it's going to tell us here. It's
not going to be able to do that because our flesh is weak. For what the law could not do
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh, but brethren, take note, in the
likeness of sinful flesh, not in the sameness of sinful flesh.
Jesus could not sin. He is immutable. Jesus didn't
just hold out. and was strong-willed and therefore
he could have sinned but he didn't because he loved us too much.
No, Jesus loved us, that's true. And Jesus cannot sin, but it
isn't because he chose not to, it's he cannot sin. And the reason
he cannot sin is because he is God. The Bible says that Jesus
is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He changes not because
He is God. He is the fullness of the Godhead
dwelling in Him bodily. And the Bible says that that
God is immutable, that He does not change. So there's no way
that Jesus could have ever sinned or become a sinner. Okay? He couldn't have sinned. But
He came in the likeness of sinful flesh. He came in a body of flesh
and blood, but that flesh and blood that He had could not sin. There was no guile found in Him,
the Bible says. Okay? He was perfect. But it says, God sending His
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh. So God condemned the sin that
was ours in the flesh. That's why there is therefore
now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus, because Christ
Jesus condemned sin in His flesh. That the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us. So see, there's what the law
could not do. The law could not make us righteous
and that the law be fulfilled in our flesh. The law could not,
I mean the flesh could not do that. It was weak because the
flesh is enabled, not able, incapable of keeping the law of God. That's why it's weak. That's
why it's not meant to make you righteous. That's why Paul's
so emphatic in our passage in Galatians 4, 9 of saying, why
go back to this meager and beggarly element and put yourself under
bondage. If you do that, you're under
bondage. You will never be free if that's the life that you want
to live. If you want to walk by the law as your rule of life,
then you are never, ever, ever going to be free from it. You're
never going to attain it. Therefore, the result of breaking
the law is death. You're cursed. I hope you, brethren, are seeing
this. I hope you're understanding the implications of this. The
law is not bad. The law is not a bad thing. It
is holy and righteous. It is the very thing that God
has given to us. But the purpose of it, the reason
why God gave it, is not so that you could attain it and be holy. God gave that perfect law as
a standard to show you this is the standard. This is you, and
you don't measure up to the standard. You need a savior. You need someone
to substitute for you because you, no matter how hard you try,
no matter how long you try, you can't do it. That's why the law
is not good for preaching to people to live this way, live
under this way, because all that does is enjoin us to bondage. But it says here, what the law
could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending
his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned
sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled
in us who walk not, here's that phrase again, who walk not after
the flesh, but after the spirit. See, the righteousness of the
law has already been fulfilled in us by the work of Christ Jesus
in his body, condemning sin in the flesh. That's already been
done. So everything that the law requires
or says for you to live, Christ did it for you. Everything that
the law demands of you, Christ did for you on your behalf. And therefore, when you're looking
to Him alone, trusting Him alone, then that righteousness that
He obtained for you is being your law, is being your walking
in righteousness. That is how you walk in righteousness
is by looking to Christ alone, by trusting Him. Not you walking
in law-keeping, me not doing this, not doing this, not doing
this, doing this, doing this, doing this. That's not walking
in righteousness. That's walking in death. Because
every time we try to walk in that in the flesh, it's nothing. The flesh profits nothing. You're
doing it in vain because it is not pleasing to God. The only
thing that is pleasing to God is Christ's walk of flesh. Everything
that is pleasing to God is Christ fulfilling the law. Christ's
death on the cross. Christ's resurrection. That's
the only thing that pleases God on your behalf. Look at verse
5. For they that are after the flesh
do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit,
the things of the Spirit. To be carnally minded is death.
To walk in the flesh, to walk after law keeping is walking
in the flesh. And to walk in the flesh is to
be carnally minded, not spiritually minded. So you're walking in
the flesh, not after the spirit. And to walk in carnal mindedness
is death. But to be spiritually minded
is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God. That word enmity
is almost the same word as enemy. Okay? Enmity. It means that it is against,
opposed to God. The carnal mind is opposed to
God for it is, listen to what it says here, the carnal mind
is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be. So look, and I want you to pay
close attention here, brethren. He uses two different phrases.
For it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. That speaks of two things. That
speaks of your will, your desire to be, and it also speaks of
your ability to be. Your desire to be obedient to
the law of God and your ability to obey the law of God. The carnal
mind is opposed against God. I don't care how many people
say, well, what about all these people out here running and going
to church every Sunday? There's millions of people in
church today, and they're giving their money to the missionaries,
and they're giving their money to the poor, and they're, you
know, they're doing all these things. They're teaching little
children in Sunday school, You know, they're having revival
courses and they got praise bands and they're all singing up with
their hands in the air and they're dancing and they're, you know,
they're hooting and hollering and in some churches they're
flopping on the ground and rolling around and all this kind of stuff. We've seen some stuff on YouTube
the other day. There's even some that are handling
snakes and drinking poison and all that kind of stuff. Listen,
to be carnally minded, is death, but to be spiritually minded
is life and peace, because the carnal mind is opposed against
God. You might think you are being
zealous for God, just like Paul thought he was zealous for God
in everything that he was doing, but whenever the Spirit of God
revealed unto him truth and gave him knowledge of the Lord Jesus
Christ and of the gospel and the truth of what God's Word
and opened up his mind to understand the things of the Word of God,
Paul then said, man, all that religious activity that I was
doing in the name of God was dumb. It was poop. It wasn't worth anything. It
did not, none of it pleased God. None of it was anything that
was righteous building. To be carnally minded is death
because the carnal mind is opposed against God for it is not subject
to the law of God. It will not stay subject to the
law of God. It might try to in certain instances.
Like I said, some people will quit being drunk. But it cannot
be subject to the law, which the law is the whole of God's
law, not some part of it. You're not good in your law keeping
just because you're keeping a majority of it. The Bible says you got
to keep it all or you keep it none. It's either all or none.
You're either keeping all the law perfectly or none of the
law and I know you're not keeping the law perfectly because right
here the Bible tells me something about you. The Bible tells me
that you are not subject to the law of God or indeed can be subject
to the law of God. You cannot be subject to the
law of God because you are just flesh. The only thing that can
be subject to the law of God is Christ Jesus. His Spirit that
is put in you is perfect and holy and cannot sin, but you
and your flesh, that's all you can do, is sin. That's why Paul
is telling them in Galatians 4.9, if you go back under this,
you're going back under bondage. You're going back under something
that you'll never get out of. You're going back into something
that you can't accomplish. You're going back into something
that you think you're gonna be able to do, but you cannot. These guys are telling you you
can do this, but you can't. God's Word says you can't. God's
Word says that that carnal fleshly mind cannot be subject, will
not be subject to God's law, or indeed it cannot be subject,
or can be subject to God's law. So then they that are in the
flesh, look at verse eight, I've been saying this over and over
again. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. It says, but ye are not in the
flesh, but in the spirit. If so be, that doesn't mean that
the flesh doesn't still exist. It still exists. It means it
doesn't mean that you're walking. You're not walking in the flesh,
but in the spirit. If so be that the spirit of God
dwell in you. Now, any man have not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of his. So, if you don't have the spirit
of Christ in you, you're not Christ. But if Christ's spirit
is in you, you're his, and you'll walk in the spirit, meaning that
you will walk according to the gospel. See, Paul is telling
us, hey, the person who is a child of grace will walk after the
flesh, or not walk after the flesh, but after the spirit.
They will walk trusting in Christ alone, and not looking to their
own law-keeping for a rule of life. And you are claiming to
be children of God. Therefore, if the Spirit of God
is in you, you're going to walk after the flesh. He's telling
us how a Christian works. Maybe that's the wrong word to
use. How a Christian is to be. What
they are. How they function. Just like
I've used the illustration before. In my line of work, I work on
extra equipment. And I have manuals. Whenever
I open that manual, that tells me how that machine is supposed
to act. That machine doesn't read that
manual and say, oh, I better act like that so that I can be
the x-ray machine. No, it's the x-ray machine because
it was made the x-ray machine and it functions like an x-ray
machine. And when all the parts and components are doing the
way the x-ray machine is supposed to work, it's the x-ray machine,
right? And all that manual is telling me is how that thing
is to function. And whenever that thing is not
functioning right, that manual tells me the reason that thing's
not functioning right is because it's right here. Well, this is
what Paul is kind of telling us. He's telling us, listen,
the way that the child of grace functions is because of the spirit
being in him, he walks by the spirit. He doesn't walk by the
flesh. He isn't looking to his outward
walk and obedience to the law for righteousness, he is looking
to Christ for his righteousness. He is looking to the Spirit of
God to be the one who controls him from within, who moves him
to love and joy and peace and longsuffering, to love the law
of God in the inner man, to love the law of God in our minds even
though our flesh is obeying the law of sin. He's saying those
who are the children of grace, they walk not according to the
flesh, but according to the spirit of God. If Christ be in you,
the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because
of righteousness. But if the spirit of him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies
by his spirit that dwelleth in you. Now that's getting into
some stuff that's talking about at the end of time. But says, therefore, brethren,
we are debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh. For
if you live after the flesh, you shall die. But if you through
the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live for
as many as are led by the spirit of God. They are the sons of
God. For you have not received the
spirit of bondage again to fear, but you have received the spirit
of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. and the Spirit itself
bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Now, the reason I went to this
length to get to here in Romans, the reason we've spent these
last several weeks building this body of doctrine that Paul has
been teaching about the law and what we've been going through
in Galatians, why is he telling the Galatians that the law is
bad, that the law is something you shouldn't follow, that the
law is not your schoolmaster anymore, that those who preach
this type of stuff is cursed. Why is Paul going to do that?
Because there is a body of doctrine that Paul is taught here in Romans
that teaches us that the law was intended for a different
purpose and that it can't do some things and that the reality
of things in the Christian is that they do not live as a rule
of life by the law but by walking in the Spirit, trusting in Christ
alone And it says, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God,
they are the sons of God. That's a statement of fact. But here he is, he said in verse
nine, chapter four, he said, if you go to the law, you're
going back to bondage. And here he says, for you have
not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. See, whenever
they go back to the law, they're going through the law in fear.
The Judaizers are telling you, you better keep the Law of Moses
to stay saved or to get saved, either one, however it was, because
they preached both. But specifically to the Galatians
who had already professed Christ, it was, you've got to keep the
Law of Moses to stay saved. If you don't keep that, you're
going to lose your salvation, or God's going to be unhappy
with you, or you're going to lose your fellowship with God.
Listen, brethren, I've heard that preached in churches my
whole entire life. In churches that preach that
we ought to keep the law, that there is a walk of righteousness
that we've got to do, that we've got to do these things before
God to keep right with God or to keep our fellowship with God.
Listen, whenever you preach it that way, that is preaching fear. I'm feared that I'm going to
lose my fellowship with God if I don't keep the law enough,
if I don't do it good enough, or if I don't do it long enough. I'm going to have fear that I'm
not going to be saved. I'm not going to be continued
to be saved. See, that's living in fear. The
child of grace doesn't have to live in that kind of fear anymore
because they have come to be taught by the Spirit that Christ
took all their sins and paid for them and that all their sins
are paid and that their righteousness has been imputed them that Christ
is their righteousness. Not their works, but Christ is
their righteousness. And so they don't have to worry
about keeping the law for righteousness before God, because God is not
counting that fleshly righteousness that cannot be done. He's counting
Christ's righteousness that was accomplished. Okay? So we're not given a spirit of
bondage. So Paul is basically telling
them, there's something off about this, Galatians. Now I'm assuming
you are brothers in Christ, that you're brethren. He called them
brethren. You know, he called them brothers in Christ. He's
still assuming that they're the children of God, that they've
been born from above. But he's saying, listen, something's
weird here because a child of grace, someone who has been born
from above, someone who has been given the Spirit and is walking
in the Spirit, they don't embondage themselves again to the law.
They don't look to the law for righteousness. They look to Christ
because the Spirit that's teaching them is teaching them Christ
alone. The Spirit that's in them is telling them it was already
done. The Spirit that's in them is telling that righteousness
has already been imputed to your account and that you are to walk
and trust in Christ alone. That's what the Spirit's telling
you. And if you're walking in the Spirit, that's what the Spirit's
telling you and you listen to the Spirit. My sheep hear my voice and they
follow me. Another's voice they will not
hear. But these Galatians was listening to another's voice
and they were starting to wander off again. And Paul was saying,
wait, listen, wait a minute, wait a minute. That's not the
gospel that was preached to you. The gospel is not you and your
righteousness by your flesh. It's Christ and His righteousness.
And why are you looking away if you continue in that path
you're going to be in bondage, and in essence, you're going
to be cursed and be in death. That sin is going to bring forth
death. That's all it can bring forth is sin. Try to keep the
law. It's only going to bring forth
sin in your life, and that is death. He says, For we have not
received the spirit of bondage to get into fear, but ye have
received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
Christ, God has adopted us, even though we're still in His flesh,
He has adopted this fleshly body because of the vessel that's
in it, because of the treasure that's in it. The treasure that's
in it is His child. This flesh is just mortal and
is going to die, but He has a body that is waiting for us. for that
person that's in us to be united to. So we have been adopted,
sin and all, we've been adopted of God and we cry Abba Father. We don't cry Moses, Moses. We cry Abba Father. The Spirit
itself witnesses with our spirit that we are the children of God.
What is that gonna do? Whatever we desire to do right
in our heart, like Paul. As a matter of fact, it's in
the chapter right before this. Whenever Paul says, I know that
in me, that is in my flesh, there are no good things. For the will
is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I
find not. When he says, I find in the law that whenever I do
good, evil is present with me. That I desire in the law of God
after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring
against the law of my mind. and bringing me into captivity
to the law of sin, which is in my members. O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?" But what
does this thing here say? It says, that the spirit is given
to us, we receive the spirit of doctrine whereby we cry, Abba,
Father, and the spirit beareth witness that we are the children
of God. So what does Paul do whenever
he gets into that place where the spirit and the flesh are
warring against each other, and he feels the weight of his wretchedness,
but the spirit of God that is in him, what does it say? It
says, Jesus Christ has served the law of God for you. So therefore, I will serve the
law of God with my mind, but with the flesh, the law of sin.
And there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are
in Christ Jesus who walk that way, who walk looking unto Jesus,
who walk looking to Christ in faith that He is their righteousness. There is no condemnation for
them." And he said, that's who I'm looking to. That's what he
says here in verse 16 of chapter 8. the spirit bear witness with
our spirit that we are the children of God. It says yes, you have
sinned, yes, you're breaking sin, yes, you are going to wander
to some degree, you're going to wander off the path and do
your thing and sin, but you're never going to go away. He's
never going to let you go away. He restrains us, He keeps us,
He preserves us. The Holy Spirit has sealed us
until the day of redemption, until the day of Christ Jesus.
He's sealed us Meaning that he is preserving us. That's what,
whenever my wife cooks food, she'll, anything that's left
over, she'll put it in a Ziploc bag and close it up, get all
the air out of it, close it up and put it in the refrigerator.
What's she doing? She's preserving that food so it doesn't go bad.
So it doesn't spoil, so it doesn't rot. So it doesn't, you know,
become unedible again, okay? That's what we talk about whenever
the Bible says that we have been sealed with the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God seals us or preserves us until the day of
Christ. It keeps us from losing faith.
It keeps us looking to Jesus. Are there going to be moments
whenever the flesh is going to come, like Paul said, and take
him captive and his members? Yeah, there are going to be times.
There's going to be a war against your mind. But the Spirit of God is there
crying out. You're a child of God. Look unto
Jesus. Look unto Jesus. That's why we
preach the gospel, is to continue to remind the child of grace
and to encourage the child of grace that that gospel is for
them, that good news is theirs, that Jesus took their sin. And
so the law is weak in that it cannot, it cannot produce righteousness. So Jesus coming in the flesh,
in the likeness of sinful flesh, He condemns sin in the flesh
that the righteousness of God might be given to us. And that that law is not ever
going to give us any kind of confidence, it's never going
to give us any kind of righteousness, it's never going to give us anything
except curse. And so Paul is saying these things
because of that. Why are you wanting to go back
into the bondage of the law that can never produce of righteousness
or never give you an assurance it's weak through your flesh.
It cannot produce righteousness because your flesh cannot produce
righteousness. Righteousness is done outside
of you in Christ, not in you. Okay? Anybody got any questions about
that? Anyone got any? I think we'll stop right there. We're going to move in to see
what Paul says about things next week in the next few chapters
in the New Testament, in the letters to the Corinthians. As
I said, we're moving through the epistles of Paul, seeing
this body of doctrine that Paul has preached and taught about
the law and why he's saying the things he's saying to these Galatian
believers and what he's saying to us as a church. and what the
Spirit is saying to everybody that claims to be a child of
God as it pertains to the law of God. So, if anybody doesn't
have any questions or anything, I think we'll just stop there
for today. We'll bow and have a word of prayer. Father, I thank
you today for your grace and for your mercy. I thank you,
Father, for the sunshine that you've given us, Lord, and for
the temperatures coming up snow melting away, and Lord, we're
just so grateful that you have given us this day together in
your name. We thank you for the word of God. We thank you for
Christ Jesus, whose death on our behalf has fulfilled all
the things that God requires of us, and as a substitute, has
taken not only the wrath of God, but has lived the law for us,
and that his work of righteousness and all of that is accounted
as ours. And Lord, we have that only by
grace and mercy. We know that we don't deserve
it, that we, like all others, are children of Adam in the flesh
and are deserving of that very thing that Christ died for, that
sin and that death. And Lord, we know that it is
only by pure grace that you have done that. And the only reason
that we have been given that grace is because of your sovereign
will. Lord, we know that you could
choose one or the other as you desire, that you have made vessels
of honor and vessels of dishonor. You've made vessels of mercy
and vessels of wrath. You have created the elect and
the non-elect to live side by side, Lord, and we don't know
who they are. But Lord, you do, and you are
sovereign to choose and to do that. You are the potter. We
are the clay. You're the creator, and we are
the creation. Lord, we dare not look to the heavens and shake
our fist and ask, why have you done this? Why have you done
this or made me this way? We don't have the right to ask
that because you are God, and we recognize that. And so we
just pray and ask that the Spirit give us humility to not be boasting
in our salvation, but boast in Christ Jesus. And so, Father,
that's what we do today. We look unto Jesus, who is the
author and the finisher of our faith, who is the secure, the
accomplisher of our salvation. We thank you for the Holy Spirit
who comes and reveals that salvation to us by granting us repentance
and faith. We thank you, Father, that you've
given us life and life eternal in Christ Jesus, Lord. And we
just look forward to the day that we put off this flesh and
that we put on immortality and that we rule and reign with you
forever and ever. Lord, we just are grateful today
again for all that you've done for us. And we ask you to bless
this time together in Jesus name.