Our text is found in Galatians
chapter five. We'll be looking at the first
six verses of that chapter. And in that chapter, the first
six verses are a synopsis or a summary. That's what synopsis
means. A summary of everything that
he has said in chapters one through four. He's summarizing it all
in six verses. He makes a very direct statement.
He's being as plain and as simple as he can be. And if a man preaches
the gospel, a man should preach the gospel as plain and as simple
as he can preach it. The gospel is not complicated.
Men are complicated. Ideas are complicated. Opinions
are complicated. The gospel is not complicated.
When I'm in this pulpit, or any other man for that matter, that
stands behind a pulpit, the responsibility is to preach the word, preach
the truth. That's what Paul told Timothy,
being instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, and
exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will
come when men will not endure sound doctrine, but instead they'll
heap to themselves teachers having itching ears. They'll turn away
from the truth and be turned to fables. What does itching
ears mean? Well, they're burning to learn
something that you don't know, so they can know that they know
it and you don't know it, and now they're gonna tell you about
it, so they look like they're something special. The Pharisees loved that stuff.
What did the Lord say? Preach the word. Preach Christ. Preach him simply. Preach him
plainly. We don't complicate it. We don't
complicate it. If it's not plain and simple,
it's more than likely it's not of the Lord. If it's not plain
and simple, more than likely it's not of the Lord. The preacher
who tells stories or use long words, they're nothing more than
just deceivers. They're deceiving others, but
they're deceiving themselves. The purpose of a God-called preacher
is to preach Christ Jesus plainly and simply, and that's what I
hope we can do this morning. And something else that's important,
how you preach, how a man preaches, is just as equally as important. If I preach the truth, but I
preach it in a condescending manner, that's not the way to
preach it. We preach in love. We preach
in love, not to rebuke someone because you know they're doing
something that they need to change, but because you love who you're
preaching to. That's how men should preach. Anything else, preaching in love,
preaching in plain and simple, anything else doesn't profit
the Lord's sheep, doesn't glorify the Lord. As a matter of fact,
anything that points to the flesh in any way, Anything that points
to the flesh, it's not glorifying God. It's not glorifying God,
it exalts the flesh. Let's read this text here, Galatians
5 verse 1 through 6. Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ hath 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 is become no effect unto
you, whoso of you are justified by the law, ye 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. I've titled this message Falling
from Grace. Falling from Grace. What does
that mean? What does that mean? Well, first I'm gonna tell us
what it doesn't mean. We'll start there. What it doesn't
mean is what a lot of religious people think that it means. They
literally believe that they can lose their salvation, that their
salvation is dependent upon how they live their lives. Their
salvation is dependent upon what they do or do not do, that their
salvation is dependent based upon how they treat others, how
often they come to church, how much they give. It's dependent
upon them. That's not what I'm talking about
at all. Falling from grace is not losing
your salvation. If you find yourself justifying
yourself by the law in the sight of God as part of your salvation
or for evidence of your salvation, and the Lord does not correct
that action, you didn't lose anything, you just were never
saved. It's that simple. Men say that they got saved,
so they actually earn their salvation by their choice, and they keep
it by the lifestyle that they live. And they say, if we don't,
we can lose our salvation. That's not in the scripture.
You're not going to find that anywhere in the scripture. You
know why? Because it's God that does the saving, not us. We don't
save ourself. If you were drowning, I mean,
poor example, but if you're drowning, how are you going to save yourself?
If you know that, I mean, you have no apparatus to help you
whenever you're in that situation. You have no hope of somebody's
going to have to throw you a lifeline or you're going to drown. Well,
that's the whole point. That's what the Lord does, is
he comes to where we are in our dead state, our drowning state,
and he saves us. Not by what we do, but by what
he did. So this losing salvation, that's
not what Paul's talking about at all. That's not found in the
Bible. That's a man-made lie. Here we have these words, fallen
from grace, but we also have the definition. I'm thankful
the Lord, you know, best thing, And I've come to learn this firsthand. Somebody said, well, I don't
know what that means. I'm going to go read a commentary and see if I can figure out what
it means. You know what gives Shons the best light on the Bible? The Bible. It was written line
upon line and precept upon precept and has to be revealed by God,
but the Lord doesn't leave us without understanding. He tells
us the truth. He might choose to not reveal
it to us at a certain time, but his truth is here. Everything
that we need to know about who God is and what Christ has done
to save his people is right here. This is all about the Lord Jesus
Christ and how that we do not go to the law for righteousness,
we come to him. If you go to the law for righteousness
and you're left there, it doesn't mean you lost anything. It means
you never were saved to begin with. It means somebody's been
left to themselves. The Lord didn't go let one of his sheep believe
that they're justified by the deeds of the law. He'll rebuke
that. He'll fix that. He'll give repentance
for that. He chastens his people. That's what Scripture says. Whom
the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. He chasten you not. Scripture says
your bastards are not sons. That's what the Lord called them.
So he keeps his people, keeps us, and causes us to look to
him. He's going to say to us, seek
ye my face. He's going to make us see. Well, that's what falling
from grace doesn't mean. We've covered that. So what does
it mean, falling from grace? Falling from grace means that
if you're circumcised or do any part of the law as the cause
or evidence of your salvation, Christ, he says right here, Christ
has become, verse four, Christ has become of no effect unto
you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, you're fallen from
grace. If you seek justification by
the law, you seek justification by what you do, Christ is none
effect to you, none effect to you. You have forsaken salvation by
grace alone. And as we heard the first hour,
salvation is by grace alone, isn't it? Can't mix works and
grace. They don't go together, can't
go together. The work was done by the Lord
Jesus Christ. We are able to believe it by
faith, but faith is given by his grace. This is all his work,
all his doing. He's saying that if you're going
to the law, not only have you forsaken salvation by grace alone,
but you're under bondage. You're found to be guilty of
sin, and no flesh can be justified by the deeds of the law. He's
saying now you're going back to the bondage that Christ set
you free from. But if they remain in that state,
he never really truly set them free to begin with. They just
continue believing the lie. You hear me say this, and I know
I'm repeating myself a lot week to week, because it really, the
same message over and over again, and it's a good message, but... The only thing the law can do
is condemn. The only thing the law can do
is say guilty. The only thing the law can do is tell us that
we are sinners. That's all the law can do. It
brings about death. Scripture says the wages of sin
is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus
Christ our Lord. This is the good news of the gospel, not
the, our hard works and our dedication, our life, our, Our workings,
our non-doings, our doings, it's all of grace. It's all of grace. The law can only expose. Yet
there are millions and millions of people who have a righteousness
because they don't do something that they used to do. I wrote
a couple of these down. People said, well, I used to
be, one of them I wrote said, I used to be an alcoholic, now
I've cleaned up my life. Or I used to party, but I stopped
that. I used to gamble. I used to cheat. I used to steal.
I used to lie. I used to be this or that, but
I've decided to follow Jesus now. That is nothing more than
self-righteousness. That's the core of self-righteousness.
It's look at me. I used to do that. I don't do
that anymore. I don't do that anymore. It's self-righteousness
is all that it does. If it points to you or if it
points to me, it's not glorifying God. It's not glorifying God. Here's one I heard recently.
Bella told me, he said, well, I used to have a problem with
lust. I don't have that problem anymore. And I thought, yeah,
you're lying. So you can cover it up, but the
Lord sees all things. What does the scripture say?
If a man looks upon a woman to lust after her, he's already
committed adultery in his heart. Lord's standards are much higher than
our standards. We hold each other to a standard that is so much
lower than the standard of God, the standard of his law. We can't
keep his law and we can't do anything that would please him
in and of ourself. This is the look at me self-righteous
mentality. And these people that I'm describing
to you, they're offended when they see others doing the things
that they used to do. They're offended because they
don't do that anymore. I don't do that anymore. And
they're just like the Pharisees. Lord, I thank Thee that I'm not
like other men are. I don't, I tithe, I attend service,
I do this, I do that. I give, I fast, all this, and
I even thank you I'm not like this publican, Lord, because
that publican, you know, he thought he was nobody and nothing, and
publican wouldn't lift up his head, but he smote upon his breast,
said, Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner. Lord said, one of
these went home justified. Who do you think it was? It was
the sinner. It was the sinner. It wasn't
the one that was bragging about themselves or saying, look at me and what
I've done. It was the one that was a sinner that needed a savior. He was justified. If it describes any of us or
somebody else that may be listening, that's what falling from grace
means. Look at me. If it's look at me, it's falling
from grace. If you go to the law for righteousness, you've
fallen from grace. If you go to look to yourself
for righteousness, you've fallen from grace. If you can look at
yourself and see a reason why God would save you, or evidence
in your life that God has saved you, And I understand that we,
we look to Christ and we believe that's the only evidence I have
is that he's still causing me to believe. I'm not talking about
that. I'm talking about something that you're doing something that
you didn't do something that you're doing now that used to
not do, but now you do it or something that you don't do anymore.
If you're looking, if you can find evidence that God saved you, then you've fallen from grace.
You have a righteousness other than Christ. We look to him as
all our righteousness. We look to him as the one that
accomplished salvation, that completed the work of salvation
in our room instead for his people. Heard somebody say one time,
well, I used to be a sinner. Now I'm a saint. Now I'm a saint. Lord, there's scripture that
calls people saints, the Lord's saints. Matter of fact, the four
and 20 elders he was reading to us in Revelation, they're
called saints. That represents the church. That's who that is.
The Lord calls his people saints. He calls them sons. But we don't
go around saying, I'm a saint, do we? You know why? That sounds
very arrogant of us, doesn't it? He said, I used to be bad, do
bad things. I don't do bad things anymore. I cleaned up my life.
These individuals are looking at external evidences that they're
saved and they've fallen from grace, fallen from grace. Very
simply put, if you're not looking to Christ as all your righteousness,
if there is one thing that you're holding on to that you think
that you've done good, where I think that I've done good enough
to please God, I have fallen from grace. You have to look
to Christ as all. That's the only way. And he says
stand fast. We're at the liberty that I'm
getting ahead of myself now, but he said stand fast. Actually,
I'm not getting too far ahead of myself. Christ, he's literally,
Paul's saying if you believe that, that you're doing something
right, Christ has become no effect to you falling from grace. Now
notice verse two, I was heading that way anyways. Behold, I,
Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ shall
profit you nothing. Or notice the very first verse,
I'm sorry. Stand fast. Therefore, in the liberty wherewith
Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the
yoke of bondage." Look at verse four. Christ is become no effect
to you, whosoever you are justified by the law, you are fallen from
grace. So here you have a contrast. You have standing and you have
falling. Standing and falling. Stand fast
in the liberty that Christ has made you free. What liberty is
he speaking of? It's the liberty whenever he fulfilled the laws
demands on our behalf. It's the liberty when he died
the perfect death for his people. He gave us liberty and freedom
of death. It's the liberty when he took
our body when he took in his took in his body our sin to himself.
He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made
the righteousness of God in Him. We've been made righteous. That's
liberty. That's liberty. But don't go back to the law
because the only thing you're doing is becoming entangled with bondage
the moment you do that. That's what he's saying. No,
the liberty is when he offered himself to his father and his
sacrifice to his father. The father was well pleased.
We've been liberated. We've been liberated. When he
by himself purged our sin, we no longer have sin. You say,
well, I see it. Lord, don't. And what he sees
is the truth. What he sees is the truth. Here's freedom. Freedom from
works. Freedom from any part of salvation
on your behalf. Look to Christ. Look to Christ. Stand fast in that liberty. Freedom
from bondage. Freedom from death. Freedom from
the power of sin. Do you know you've been freed
from the practice of sin? You say, what do you mean? practice
of saying, or the practice of intentionally refusing Christ.
We don't intentionally refuse Christ anymore. Do we still sin
day to day? Absolutely. But we don't refuse Christ anymore,
do we? No, we've got to have Him. We
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I'm talking about.
The practice of the practice of looking at God and wanting
to be your own God and not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. We've
stopped practicing that. We believe him. He saved us from
that. One day, very soon, he's gonna
save us from the very presence of sin. Won't that be glorious?
No more sin. That means no sickness, no death,
no suffering, no heartache, no pain. Stand there. Stand in that liberty,
believing that he is the deliverer. He's the one that liberated his
people. He's the one that gave us this liberty to stand fast
upon. And don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Come to Christ who said, my yoke is easy and my burden is light
because the work is finished. Stand in Christ alone as all
your justification before God, as all your righteousness. Not
what you used to do or don't do anymore, but what he Him alone. Not what our eyes can see, not
what others tell us. Stand in Him complete. Look to
Him. Stand in Him complete. The third point I have to make
this morning is this. If you look to the law, you're
trying to pay your own debt. You owe a debt as a sinner. a
mountain of sin must be paid for. The Lord will not acquit
the guilty. If you are guilty, you must be punished. You must
be, and what's the punishment? Well, the wages of sin is death.
The Lord's very clear in his word on that. So if you're trying
to do the works of the law for justification or righteousness,
you're literally trying to pay your own debt. Here's the problem.
Going to the law for righteousness, trying to do anything that would
please God as part of your salvation, it's called iniquity. However
you think, however you want to put it, trying to fix your sin
in any way, shape or form is iniquity. And God hates the workers
of iniquity. Psalm 5.5. So if you are going
to the law for righteousness, you've fallen from grace. That's
what he's saying. You're falling from grace. You're attempting to make what
Christ accomplished effectual by going to that law like it
wasn't enough. You're saying without meaning to, you're saying
the worst blasphemous thing you could. You're saying the blood
of Christ wasn't efficient. It wasn't good enough. God needs
me and my choice. God needs my help. God needs
my hand. God needs me to do this. No, he doesn't. When Christ said
it is finished, first of all, he cannot lie. But second of
all, we know God was pleased with him because he resurrected
his son. That means we've been justified. It's already happened.
Justification happened on the cross of Calvary for the Lord's
people. We've been justified. And in his time, he lets us know
about it. If you approach the Lord implying
that you are good enough to please him by your works, you're implying
Christ was not good enough to please him. And he tells us, you become a
debtor to the entire law. You know what the Lord calls
a person that tries to come to him, tries to climb up any other
way, a thief and a robber, trying to steal the Lord's glory. He
said, John 14, six, Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Anything
else is falling from grace. Christ is who we come to because
Christ is the only one that can cause us to go to the Father
and be seen as perfectly righteous. We come to Christ alone. Which brings us to our conclusion,
our conclusion. And this is something that I
haven't really mentioned a whole lot about, I don't think, in
the last weeks, but I did early on. Paul walks in on a situation
where Barnabas and Peter were doing the same thing that the
Judaizers were doing. They were eating, they had segregated
themselves from the Jews and the Gentiles because the Gentiles
was uncircumcised. And Peter and Barnabas came underneath
the pressure, I guess, and they went over there and sat with
the Jews. Paul openly rebuked them right there on the spot.
No, he said, this is not okay. This is not okay. What's my point? Were they falling from grace? Do I mean did they lose their
salvation? Absolutely not. But if they were looking to the
law as part of their salvation or as part of evidence of their
salvation, then they had fallen from grace in that regard. That
doesn't mean they were lost. The Lord's gonna bring them back
to him. We see that very clearly, don't
we? He doesn't leave them in that state. He's not saying that
you fail, you're forever gone away from the Lord because you
made a decision. If we could do that, We'd be
getting saved and getting unsaved all the time, wouldn't we? Aren't
you glad it doesn't work that way? I know a church that really believes
that, too. They really, yeah, you have to, you better repent,
they'll say, of your sin or you're gonna be lost again. And it's
all that pressure and all that, but it's just not true. No, the
Lord says, the Lord says he will keep his people. There was a time Barnabas and
Peter got called up in the mix of something, they made a wrong
decision. What about Peter denying the Lord or denying affiliation
with the Lord? What do you call that? You see
what I'm saying? So even a believer for a time, can do silly things. You can call them stupid things,
I guess, if you want to. We know better, but maybe we
hold on to tradition. Maybe we hold on to something
that we shouldn't be holding on to, thinking that it's okay,
and it's not looking to Christ in grace. Well, what does that
mean? The Lord's gonna teach us. The Lord's gonna teach us
that that's wrong. He's not gonna leave us in that
state. He's not gonna leave us there. Think about Jonah that ran away
from God. Did the Lord just let him go?
No, he sent a storm, he sent a whale, he brought him back,
didn't he? Think about Peter who denied the Lord, denied affiliation
with the Lord. What did the Lord do to him?
He told him, do you love me? Feed my sheep, feed my sheep. Lord keeps his people, we're
kept by the power of God, not ourself. So we find a time of
unbelief. We found a time of falling away.
It'll be brief. The Lord will bring us back.
He won't leave His Holy One. He won't let His Holy One see
corruption. And it is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do
we see that? Even Peter and Barnabas had succumbed
to this lie, but there's good news. 2 Timothy 2.13 says, if
we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself. He cannot deny himself. The Lord's
chosen people are kept by his power, not left to ourself. He
promised that. Did you know that? He promised
that. All that the Father give me shall
come to me, and he that cometh to me, I'll have no eyes cast
out. He said, Father, I finished the work of all that thou hast
given me, I have not lost one. Not lost one, he's not gonna
lose a sheep. He's not gonna lose a sheep. He might let us
go down a path where we have to get chastened of the Lord,
and that's okay. Chastening for a time is not
pleasurable or pleasant, but the tribulation of your faith
worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope,
and hope maketh not ashamed of the gospel, because it shed abroad
in our heart. Aren't you glad the Lord knows what he's doing?
The Lord knows what he's doing. Look at verse five and six in
closing. For we, through the spirit, wait
for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ, Jesus
Christ, neither circumcision available to anything or nor
uncircumcision, but faith, which worketh by love. We are made to wait on the Lord. How many times have you put your
hand to something and it messed up? Maybe it was something, a
choice that you made you didn't pray about. You know, I didn't
really think to pray on that. Now I'm praying, Lord, I messed
this up. This isn't good, help, I'm drowning. Save me, Lord.
Lord makes us wait on him, doesn't he? We are made to have good
works by the faith he gives us in love. That's what he's telling
us right here. Everything he requires, he provides.
The word wait is expect. We are made to rest in Christ,
having no confidence in the flesh, expecting everything that he
promised to come to pass. We expect that, and rightfully
so, because our God can't lie. Our God can't lie. This is the
glorious liberty of Christ's finished work. Anything else,
this is standing firm. Anything else and everything
else is falling from grace. If it's something, grace plus
something is falling from grace. It's that simple. It's that simple.
Aren't you glad the Lord will not lose a sheep? You and I cannot
mess it up. Nothing in hell can mess it up.
Nothing in heaven can mess it up. We're sealed by his spirit.
We're sealed by him. Rest in the Lord, knowing that
if something does happen where you get caught up in a moment
of unbelief, he will bring you back to his fold. He'll bring
you back to him. Just like the prodigal son, he
won't let you leave. He'll bring you back. Let's pray.
Father, we ask that you would take these words and bless it
to our understanding in Christ's name. Amen.