We are going to be in Galatians
5, verses 1-16. Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again
with the yoke of bondage. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you,
that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. For
I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he
is a debtor to the whole law. Christ has become of no effect
unto you, and unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law,
you are fallen from grace. For we, through the Spirit, wait
for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Jesus Christ
neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision,
but faith which worketh by love. Ye did run well, who did hinder
you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh
not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth a whole
lump. I have confidence in you through the Lord, that ye will
be none otherwise minded, but be that troubleth you, ye shall
bear his judgments, whosoever he be. And I, brethren, if I
have yet preached, Circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution?
Then is the fence of the cross ceased. I would obey. I would. I can't read. I would. They were
even cut off. Which trouble you for brethren?
You have been called into liberty. Only use not liberty for an occasion
to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law
is fulfilled in one word. Even in this, thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye abide and devour one
another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.
This I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill
the lusts of the flesh." I assume we should not look back
and dwell and enjoy and wish you had the life you had before
you come to know the Lord. And each one of us have been
there, that we are born in sin, and so therefore we are only
here by the grace of God under this gospel, the gospel of truth
about who Christ is, and we love to hear it, and we desire to
hear it. But think about when you did
not know the Lord. People today don't know they
don't know the Lord. They walk this earth and they
go to these other churches and they've got all kinds of ideas
of what the gospel is, but they don't know the Lord. They don't
know that. Think about when you walk before
you come to know the Lord. You didn't know you didn't know
Him. Religion had a hold on you. Probably every one of us, either
that or some of us didn't want nothing to do with it at all,
Like myself, for example, I'll use me as an example. I grew
up in Martinsburg, and from the time I was a little kid to, well,
until I was grown, my mom, we walked to church. And when the
weather was bad, Mom didn't go, or she didn't feel good, but
I went every Sunday. She made sure I went, and we
walked. That's how we got there. I didn't know I didn't know the
Lord. I was a little bitty guy then. Grew up a teenager in that
church. But we went to what was called
the community church. So there was a community church
and there was a Catholic church. To this day, I wonder what that
preacher preached. That's how much interested I
was and how much I understood anything about any of it. Because
that's a perfect example also of the gospel of the world and
the gospel of grace. That preacher was able to preach
to everyone in there It didn't matter what their congregation,
what their desire of religion is. Methodist, Baptist, Christian,
go on and on. It did not matter. But he preached
to God, preached the message every Sunday. Now the Catholics
were set apart and everybody knew what they did. But they
came to our church and everybody heard the same message. And they
didn't leave. They stayed there. They were
members of that church. That was their church. And it
was just a general message. Oh, I wish I could remember what
he preached, but it had to do with works. Has to have done
with works because he wasn't preaching the gospel word of
preaching here. It was not that. It was all bound up into how
good you can be and what wonderful things you could do and help
others. Oh, also attendance buttons. You know, I had two of them,
big old round one. Then bars under it for all the
years I'd ever missed one Sunday. Oh, I wanted them bars. That
was important. Looked like a general. And that
was a wonderful thing. But none of them knew that they
didn't know the Lord. And to know the Lord was one
of those kind of things where you had the, you'd go out down
front and you'd tell them that you knew the Lord and then they'd
baptize you on a special day. Just like things today. Nothing's
changed. And then I ended up going to
Mexico, Missouri, and to another church, and they had a lot more
activities. I kind of liked that, but I never felt very comfortable
with them. And we went to there, and I didn't know they didn't
know the Lord. It was a burden upon me, because
the preacher really laid it on heavy, especially in invitation
times. I mean, just as I am, went on until somebody got up
there. But anyway, it's... One of those things that just
went on and on. And actually, we came down here. Still didn't
know I didn't know the Lord. I didn't have a clue. Nobody
out here knows that they don't have the Lord. Every one of these
people that go in these churches, they think they're okay. They're
fine. They don't have to search anymore. But they interpret the
Scriptures instead of going by Revelation. Christ reveals Himself
unto you. That's how come we know who He
is this very day. Because it's by revelation. We
didn't figure this out. And of course, we then eventually
was invited to a church, which one thing led to another, and
here we are. But I didn't know the Lord. That's the main thing
I want to bring out. I did not know that I didn't
know the Lord. And then when someone come along
and talk to you about another religion, first of all, you were
already warned that you didn't want to be a Mormon or you didn't
want to be a Latter-day Saints or anything like that. That was
a no-no. Stay away from them. And people would come and talk
to you about their religion. I didn't have enough in my mind
to be able to say anything about it, but I wasn't interested in
it. Mom went to Baptist Church, and
that's where I went was Baptist Church from the beginning of
time to got here. That was Baptist Church. That's
the way we are. Now, each one of you has got
some kind of little part in your or a big part in your life about
how you end up here. Jackie brought it up earlier
this morning. about the path that you take from when you were
born in your home and the Lord took you through all these trials
and all these different places and you moved, you went to college,
you saw people, you dated girls, you did all these things. And
all these things brought us to right here. He was bringing His
sheep where He wants them. We stayed in Cape Girardeau only
because we loved it here. We loved the scenery. Everything
we wanted was here. Didn't know nothing about the
Gospel. Had nothing to do with it. We liked it here. And because
He put that like in our mind, we stayed here. And then one
thing led another to come here. Now everybody's got their own
story. Everybody comes somehow and got here. And whatever you
went through before, the Lord laid that out for you. That's
His path. He made your path up to here.
And not a single thing can get in the way of it. Nothing. Because
that's His work. And He's going to save you because
you're one of His children. And so that's how it happened.
You got here by the road that the Lord set out in front of
you. And so I bring all that up to the fact that, let's look
at these verses here. It says, Stand fast therefore
in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Now, it says stand
fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. It took
us down all these roads to bring us here. that He may have mercy
upon us and grace us with His love and His message. He revealed
this message to us. We didn't know it before. And
you didn't see it in here. You just read things and I don't
know how they preached around them, but they did. You didn't
see it. But He's saying that all you've been through and you
brought it to here. Now you think about how many years you've been
here in this church and you worshipped here. And you think about how
He's kept you. All these years, how He's kept
you. We've been through some pretty tough times after we've
come to know the Lord. But He makes that so, so we'll
be stronger in Him. We look to Him and be stronger
and know that all the things we went through, it was to teach
us things. And even this very day, with
the war going on overseas, and all the things going on about
us, and everything. We know that the Lord has done
all that for our good. So we left our homes just like
He left our brothers from our homes to here. The time we grew
up, all these things went together that we may be saved. And so
all this stuff that's going on over there, He set up kings and
He took down kings. He killed people and nations. He killed animals and everything.
You think how horrible that is. But everything works together
for good for those who love Christ. Even that over there, He's in
control. And what peace that gives you.
If you didn't really truly believe that, if you believed in the
God of your imagination, you'd have all kinds of things that
you'd be worried about, about that. But we don't. We believe
in our sovereign God. The one who is over all things. So he says, stand fast in the
liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. He says stand fast in the truth.
in the truth of Christ. This is not found anywhere else.
And many people come in and they listen to this, and then they
walk away. And really, while they're here,
they're very happy and comfortable. Some of them, some of them not.
You know, it's just like a community church. Some of them came in
there, and I'm sure some believed part of the message and other
parts of it they didn't believe, but that's where they went. And
so that's just what they did. But we have learned that we should
stand fast in the truth about Christ. And he talks about it
being a liberty. We have been made free in Christ. We don't fear our sin and others
under the rules of the law. We sin day in and day out, moment
to moment. But we don't fear our sins. We
wish they weren't there. We'd like to be like Christ.
We'd like to live like Christ. But we don't fear our sins because
they've been taken care of by Christ. God does not see us as
a sinner. They don't see our sins. And
so, therefore, we don't fear our sins. We're not scared of
them. We just work at, well, I guess
it says to live a life opposing or looking to Christ to be free
from sin. We desire to be like Him. And
so, therefore, we attempt to do so. But we are free, or made
free, because of Christ's work for us. And so therefore, this
liberty they're talking about here has been given to us. Wherewith
Christ hath made us free. He made us free. He took us from
that world of religion out there and brought us to this world
where Christ is preached in truth. You must know Him in truth. And
you cannot have these feelings of safety without being in the
truth. Because the God of the world
is one of your imagination. And do you trust yourself? Do
you trust your mind, your thoughts, your motives, everything you
do? So many things you get started
and you don't finish. Some things you get mad at. Other
things you shouldn't have even been dabbling in. You should
have left it alone. We're just that way. So therefore,
it has to be the work of Christ because it's centered and He
knows which way direction you're going and He knows your finish
line. But He says here, He's talking to the Galatians. He's
concerned about the Galatians because they're having some problems.
There's some people there that are stirring trouble up. And
he says, be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. That's
where we were before. The bondage of the law. A yoke
is designed to put around your neck to pull. You work. You pull. A horse pulls a plow or wagon
with that pushing against that yoke. And that's what we do.
When it comes to the works, it's constantly working. You're just
constantly. It's no rest. There's no rest
in it. You're just constantly hoping
that you're doing enough that God will have compassion on you
on Judgment Day. It's designed to around the constant
labor that we have there. You know, the law is set up in
such a way that the law points out sin. It doesn't save you.
And so, when we're in religion, we're constantly working, but
the law is constantly showing you that it ain't enough. It's
just never enough. You've got to do more and more.
So it's just don't get entangled back in that religious stuff
that's out there. It's designed to constantly labor
you, labor, and it cannot get, you can't get this off. You can't
get off that, that yoke. It has to always be going on.
As long as you're alive, you're fighting that. There's always
doubt. There's always going along with
that. But it's never ending work. even
into eternity, it's never-ending work. He says that you're entangled
in the yoke of bondage, and there's no way of getting out outside
of the grace of God. The religion is interpreted by
people who don't even know the Lord and preach it. It's interpreted. Interpreted is never right, because
everybody has a different way of interpreting things. And so
you never have the same God that everyone's worshiping like we
have, the true God. You have all these others out
here that creates these denominations. So this constantly fighting and
going against that yoke. And so this bondage, it restricts
you. It restricts you from doing many
things and it's constantly causing you to feel guilty. I don't even
know why we searched. We didn't know the Lord, and
you think about it, we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't
have no idea. We would have been better off if we hadn't even
searched religion, just left it alone. And the guilt would
not have been so much. But He says here, stand fast. Stay here. Protect yourself.
Be sure to just hang on to this in all ways. We do that here. We want this building to be here
for a place to worship. We dig deeper in our pockets
to keep that so. We're here. We want to preserve what we hear
here. And we know if we come here,
this is our safety. We have to hear of Christ. So
he says, stand fast in the liberty, liberty that Christ gives us.
And that liberty, like I said, I think before, that we're not,
we don't have that guilt of sin. It's been taken from us. And
he says, don't go back. Don't get entangled again in
that yoke of bondage. Don't walk away from this. And
he said, Paul, in verse 2, Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if
ye be circumcised, Christ profit you nothing. See, circumcision
is an outward ceremony depicting you, showing you that you are
religious because of the law. You must do what we call works
to obey the law. And so, he says here, circumcision,
which is a picture of Well, I guess it's a picture of salvation in
the world. It has to be something that's
shown. It's not in their heart. It shows that you're religious.
It's a ceremony. And therefore, When the freedom
of Christ, we don't do ceremonies. We don't have a ceremony for
that. And you don't need an outward sign that you're a believer.
We have it in our heart. We walk it in our life. We speak
it in our messages. We witness to people. And that's
how it's shown. But it's an outward show of your
religion. It's another form of works. It's
another form of doing something. Then the thing of it is, it's
not salvation, because that's not the way God saves. We know
that now. He saves by His grace, and by
His love toward us, and by the revelation of Him. The works
of Christ may not be for you. If you're still under works,
if you're under religion of works, Christ profits you nothing. You're
not part of Him. All the work that He did for
our salvation to be that perfect person who walked this earth
and obeys the law and obeyed everything perfectly and was
our blood sacrifice, that only applies to believers. That don't
apply to you. You're thinking you can take
care of yourself and your sins and you can go before God on
your own and you can't do it. You can't do it. He will not
look upon you because you are still full of sin. The blood
has not washed it away. He says in verse 3, For I testify
again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to the whole
law. You must obey the whole law.
And that's the thing of it, is it has to be obeyed perfectly,
just like Christ did. We can't do it. We were born
in sin. We're dead in sin. We cannot
do anything to help ourselves. And so therefore, the state that
we're in is sin, and we will always be there outside of the
grace of God. The Ten Commandments, they tell
you that they show your sin. Ceremonies, they're not part
of Christ. Ceremonies, church ceremonies,
some wear robes. They go through routine things
and all that sort of thing. It has nothing to do with Christ. That's religious acting. Church
rule, that's another one that ties you down. You don't have
your liberty when you're under church rule. But the thing of
it is, is you must obey the whole law. So then what that brings
down is you have to obey the whole law and the thing of it
is, is think about your motives. Think about what goes on in your
mind When you do something for someone, you're generous to someone,
you help someone on the side of the road, you go and feed
or visit with an ill person or something like that, and you
think you're doing a good thing. But when you want to help that
person, was you wanting attention for doing it? Did you pleasantly
go help him or in your mind were you hating to go help him, but
I think I must? The motive is the sin also. And so many times our motives
would condemn us. But you have to obey the whole
law to be accepted by God. And only Christ did this. And
God would only accept the pure sacrifice. Only one sacrifice
of a perfect man. And we didn't fit. But Christ
did. He walked the earth perfectly.
He became a man to do so. And the thing of it is about
the ceremonies and all that that goes on, we don't know how they're
supposed to be anymore. You see, there's no rules on
how you're supposed to sacrifice an animal. They don't know the
rules. They knew the rules when they
did it. How it's supposed to do, the routine of it, the whole
bit. We don't know that. There's nowhere in the records
to tell us how to do that. Anything like that, any kind
of ceremony, there's no rule. So if we did it, if we attempted
to do it, we'd be in sin because we wouldn't be doing it correctly.
But you see, no one has direction to perform these sacrifices of
blood or any sacrifices. And we're responsible for all
the statutes in this work. Not only the Ten Commandments
and all that, but we're responsible for this whole thing, this whole
statement of God's law and who He is. So he says, Paul says
to you that if you be sacrificed, Christ profits you nothing, for
I testify again to every man that is sacrificed that he is
a debtor to do the whole law. He will never pay that debt.
never ever pay that debt. That's why there's eternity in
hell. That debt can never ever be paid. And so, this sins that
we know that we're sinners. When we met Christ, when He revealed
Himself to us, He showed us perfection as far as sin goes. He's perfect. He showed us Him. But then again,
He showed us us also. And we're so imperfect. And so
therefore, we can see that there's not anything that we could possibly
do to please him. We have to beg for his mercy. And if we know him and we love
him, it's only because he loved us first. In verse 4, Christ
has become of no effect unto you. Whosoever of you are justified
by the law, ye are fallen from grace. So let's go back here
a little bit and talk about that part here. It's a form of apostasy is what he's
teaching here. He's saying there's somebody
in this church that is stirring things up. They're coming in. and introducing works within
your religion, which is nothing but gospel, the grace of God,
the love of Christ. They're introducing things to
be done. And they're sitting amongst us.
They're amongst you here. And they talk just like we do. They love it. They do take part
in everything. And they look like we are. We've had a few of them. that
have come and listened to this gospel. And, I mean, you would
have swore they were just straight up and down believers and everything. And they knew the Lord and everything
was great. But He says here, Christ is becoming
no effect unto you to whoever that type of person is. It's
amongst your congregation. There was somebody stirring up
things in Galatia. He says, whoever you are, you
are justified by the law. You are fallen from grace. These
are the people that come in and then they go away. They look
like us. They live like us. They're part
of us. They come in. They declare they're believers.
And then one day, they're gone. And usually they're stirring
up things within the congregation. And God's children can be, how
would you say, influenced. They can be influenced. But they
will never be taken away. But during that time of worship,
People that come in that don't know the Gospel and never do
well know it, they can tear up the unity within a church. They
can cause it, make it so that we're backbiting and fussing
with one another and all that old nonsense. It's in their heart. The evil's in their heart. And
they do these things. They don't like this Gospel.
And so they do that. And the thing of it is, grace
churches are not immune from that at all. As a matter of fact,
churches have fallen apart because of just that very thing. It's
just the way it is. So he says, work of Christ is
not for you. He is speaking to apostates.
They have fallen from grace, never knew Christ in the first
place, and they have heard and confessed to believe, and then
they've walked away. They really aren't believers.
You know, it's kind of strange who was out in this world before
we come here. We didn't know the Gospel. We
didn't know the true meaning of these verses. We thought they
were things to do and not to do. We didn't see Christ in the
Scriptures and all that sort of thing. And so we come to worship
here. We started a long time ago in
other church buildings. But when we started hearing the
doctrines of Christ, It wasn't, we were interested. We didn't
hate it. Now some people did. But we,
Jack and I, we didn't hate it. We thought, what is this? What
are they, what's he talking about? And over a period of time, through
the revelation of Christ, this became part of us. I mean, it
was, we were one with Christ and we believed it and we loved
it. But some people never, ever get to that point. They may hear
you say, they may hear, they may think it's neat, and then
they'll walk away. And most of the time, they cause
trouble before they go. But in verse 5 he says, For we
through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.
And so we don't desire any part of the law. The law is good.
But we don't desire any part of the law for we live unto Christ. And so we live with patience
no matter what God brings our way and never walk away. True
believers will stay until the very end. And that's a good indication
that someone is a believer because they stay until it's time for
Christ to take them home. They'll stay. So He'll keep us. He'll protect His own because
it is His work. And so therefore, we will inherit
the Kingdom of Heaven. For it says, through the Spirit,
through Christ's Spirit, We wait for hope of righteousness by
faith. We don't give up. We just keep
on going. And we wait. One day, our time
on this earth will be enough. It'll be over. That day is numbered
for each one of us. We'll go home with Christ. Because
we wait. For we're through the Spirit,
we wait for hope. That hope is being with Christ.
Hope of righteousness. Perfection. And we do that by
faith because we, by faith, know these words, know the Gospel,
and know Christ that's in this Gospel. So through faith we continue. It says, verse 6, for in Jesus
Christ neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision,
but faith which works love. So in Christ, grace is all important,
and our works contribute to nothing. So therefore, we're saying here
that if you believe works, which is works
of circumcision, you know that you believe that, then Christ's
work does not for you, does nothing for you. It's not for you. If you haven't begged for mercy
and He's revealed Himself unto you and saved you, you're destined
for your day of destruction. You were designed for that purpose. Oh, what a doctrine that just
eats at someone who doesn't know the Christ to know that they
may be made for the day of destruction. They may not have hope. But we
don't know who they are, and they don't know who they are.
And that's all we can do is ask them to beg for mercy, to pray
unto them, and hopefully God will reveal Himself to them if
they're one of His sheep. And the thing of it is, as he
said, but faith which worketh by love. It all has to do with
love. Not cold works, but love. This persuasion cometh not of
him that calls you. This turning away from the Gospel,
it doesn't come from Christ, the one who calls you. It's a
part of the world. It's Satan tempting you. And
if you're not a believer and you walk away, you have gone
back with the world. This persuasion cometh not from
Him that calls you. This persuasion, this interest
in the gospel works, that was not brought to you by Christ.
Verse 7, He said, You did run well. Who did hinder you that
you should not obey the truth? One of the greatest fears we
can have here, one of them, In God, we trust God. But He does
sometimes bring people in that don't know the gospel. And they
can turn things upside down. They can influence you. Not that
they'll destroy this congregation. Not that they can take you away
and cause you not to have your salvation. But they can make
you miserable. They can destroy the unity within
a church. We've had it a few times happen.
But somehow or another, it was taken care of. But here, the
Jews, in other words, brought in the false gospel. And that's
what hindered them. Brought it in here and plant
seeds and plant this. You know, I don't believe that
deal where only certain ones can be saved. I don't believe
that deal that I can't say I invite Christ in my heart. I don't believe
that deal. And they just plant a little
seed here and plant a little seed there and plant another
one somewhere else. It happens all the time in grace
churches. Because you see, the devil's
got the ones out there. Satan's got those churches. This
is Christ's church. He would love to disrupt Christ's
church. Verse 9, a little leaven. Leaven is a whole lump. I don't
think I have to explain that. That means that you put a little
leaven in bread and it will spread, grow, get bigger. And that's
what he's talking about, the false religion that may come
between you. Between us. Let's see here. Verse 10, I have
confidence in you through the Lord that you will be none otherwise
minded. But he that troubles you shall
bear his judgment, whosoever you be. He is talking that those that preach
the false gospel will spend eternity with Satan. They are not called
of God. They would only preach the true
Gospel if they were called to God. Only called preachers will
preach the true Gospel. The others don't know it. They
don't know what else to tell you. They have the same imagination
that you have of who God is. And no one really stands on their
own. They have to have a God or something
to hang on to. And so they just go to those
churches and they're blind to it. They have no idea that they
don't know the Gospel. Paul says, I have confidence
in you. I have confidence in you all
out there. In you and me. Through the Lord. Through the Lord, because He's
the one that will keep you. That ye will be none otherwise
minded about Christ, about the Gospel, about the truth. But
he that troubles you shall bear judgment, whosoever he be. See, Paul didn't know who it
was. that was stirring things up.
But he knew that there was people having troubles there in Galatia. In verse 11 he says, And I, brethren,
if I preach circumcision, why do I ever suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross
ceased. Boy, what a scripture there. If I preached works, they would
not persecute me. Because men hate grace and it
makes them feel guilty and lost when they hear about grace. You
mean you're telling me I don't know the Lord? You mean you're
telling me I'm going to die and go to hell? You're telling me
that's what they do. That's what they think. It's
an offense to them. This verse here again, it says, If I was preaching, Paul says,
if he was preaching circumcision, works, if that's the case, if
I'm not preaching the truth and I'm preaching works, how come
they're persecuting me? Why are they bothering me? Why
are they wanting to kill me? Why are they attacking me all
the time? Because the world does not like
God's free grace. They don't like it. And so therefore,
that's why he's being attacked. And you go out here and you witness
the people, and you're going to run up against a few walls.
But he says, if that's the case, he said, you didn't learn it
from me. If I preached works, I wouldn't suffer persecution. But he says, I do. And I am. So I'm not responsible for you
wandering away from the Gospel or having trouble with that in
your church. I preach the truth. He says the cross really is an
offense to those who don't know the Lord. Verse 12, he said,
I would they were even cut off which trouble you. I won't preach
what that really means, but I will tell you that I hope that they
are found out and God will deal with them. It was a nice way
to put it. He hopes that they don't have
to suffer. They don't have to put up with
this very long. Nobody wants this in a gospel church. They
just don't want this going on. We come here to hear of Christ
and go away with peace and hope and refreshed. And we don't need,
after you hear a message, somebody tearing it down. We need this
to rest in the gospel. So he says in Verse 13, For brethren,
ye have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion
to the flesh, but by love serve one another. So look after one
another in Christ. Love one another. Look after
one another. And he says you've been called
to liberty. You've been called to freedom.
You've been freed. You're in Christ. You don't have
to obey these laws and all perfectly because You can rest. It's been done for you. You know
you can't accomplish it. You can't do it. But it's been
done for you. Rest. Be comfortable with where
you are. You have liberty, but Doc, don't
use it as you please. Don't do whatever you want to
do. Believers desire to be like Christ. We want to have that rest that's
in the Gospel. So, you know, you don't just
go out here and live like the world because God's graced you. A believer wants to be like Him.
We desire to live like Him. We fail all the time, but we
desire to be like Him. And also the peace that comes
with it, like I said just a little while ago, is that even though
we can't do it perfectly, and we feel bad about it, we can't
do it perfectly. But we don't have to live in
fear of our sin. It's taken care of. Of our shortcomings. We don't have to feel fear over
that. There is no fear. We were born
into liberty. We were set free. We were set
free from obeying that works and church religion and all that
stuff. We were set free from that. All
these things that they do up there. I love Lent. I do, I love
Lent. Fish sandwiches are cheap during
Lent. They put a sale on them all the
time. I love it, but I don't observe Lent. That's the works
that they do, but I sure like that fish. But anyway, love and
care for one another, both spiritually and physically. Verse 14, it
says, For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. All laws are fulfilled in love.
Christ gives us this desire and love for one another. And it
is just the way of a believer. Now how does the law fulfill
completely with love? Well, if you love your neighbor,
You won't do things to them. You won't be mean to them. You'll
be courteous and kind to them. All the Ten Commandments, for
example, are obeyed with love. Christ has obeyed them and walked.
But we, as believers, we've already obeyed that law in Christ. But
we still, to take care of one another and love one another,
we don't offend anybody. That's just the way it is. Verse
15 says, But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye
may not consume one of another. And so that again talks about
how that destroys unity. People who come here with a desire
to see Christ in the messages and to worship Him, they come
of one accord. in one thought, in one mind,
desiring to see the one Christ that we know. But if you come
and you bite and desire one another, first of all, you can't worship.
You're always thinking the other person deserves a worse than
you do. It's all these things that destroys the unity. And
you must have unity to truly worship. You just really do. Everyone sitting here, we need
to get along. We need to have unity. Same mind
about who Christ is. Same mind about how the church
runs. Same mind about all these things.
You must have that unity. And again, like I said, grace
churches are not immune from this devouring one another and biting
and devouring one another. All of them have troubles from
time to time. And then in verse 16, it's the end of my message,
this I say then, walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill
the lusts of the flesh. Look to Christ. You will be rescued
from the world and kept from the world. So walk in the Spirit. Walk and talk with Christ. Pray
with Christ. Walk in the Spirit. Knowing He's
with you all the time. Protecting you. Caring for you.
Walk in the Spirit. And you won't be filled with
the lust of the flesh, desiring all that the world has to give
us. Money, fame, cars, homes, all these things are things in
the world that barely touches the surface of what's out there
that comes to us that we desire sometimes. But He says, walk
in the Spirit and you won't fulfill the lust of the flesh. Okay. Did you pray, Nathan? We pray that You keep us in unity,
and that can only come by steadfastly preaching Christ. We always want
to hear of Him who saved us, and how He saved us, and why
He had to save us, and the love with which He saved us. If there's
anything else in that message, it just waters it down. It isn't
what we desire to hear. and it will not be glorifying
to you. So Lord, keep us because you need to. We can't keep this
ourselves. We ask that as we go from here,
you keep us and your statutes and your ways steadfast in our
hearts.