We're gonna be in the book of
Galatians chapter one, if you would like to turn. Galatians chapter one. As Paul furthers his letter of
admonishment to the Galatians, He has reminded them that salvation
is not of man, as we heard the first hour. He's reminded them
that it wasn't by the will of man. It wasn't of men, but it
was of God. His calling was of God. The revelation
of Jesus Christ was the result of the calling. The Lord called
him and revealed his son. And he continues to say this,
look in verse 13, For ye have heard, well let me say this first,
now he's gonna give us his, what he was before the Lord saved
him. Gonna hear about his, before
he was converted, what he did. He says, for ye have heard my
conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that
beyond measure I persecuted the church of God and wasted it,
and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals. in my own
nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of
my fathers. But when it pleased God who separated
me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal
His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen, immediately
I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem
to them which are apostles before me, but I went unto Arabia. and
returned again into Damascus. Then after three years, I went
up to Jerusalem to see Peter and abode with him 15 days. But
other of the apostles saw I none save James, the Lord's brother.
Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God
I lie not. Afterwards I came into the regions
of Syria and Sicilia, and was unknown by face unto the churches
of Judea, which were in Christ. But they had heard only that
he which persecuted us in times past now preaches the faith which
once he destroyed. And they glorified God in me.
This hour, I have titled the message, Zealous of Tradition.
Paul says, I was exceedingly zealous of the traditions of
my fathers, the tradition of my fathers. You can know a doctrine
and not know Christ. We can know, you can have the
entire Bible memorized and not know the God of the Bible. You
can have the right words. You can have the right words
to say when people ask you about salvation. You can have the right
words to say and still not know Christ. You can have a complete
understanding of Calvinism and not know the Lord Jesus Christ. See, salvation is a person. Salvation
is a person. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul's
saying here, I was zealous of tradition. I was rooted in it. I was grounded in it. I went
to the law for righteousness. And he gives us his pedigree
in another place. He tells him, he says, I was
born in the house of Benjamin, circumcised the eighth day. Tells
us all the stuff that he did. He said, I learned under Gamaliel. and was a very respectable teacher
at that time. He says, but I was exceedingly
more than my peers. He was the best of the best.
By man's standard, he would have been an extremely well-taught scholar or a well-taught
man. He would have been looked up
to. He would have been admired by his peers because of his knowledge,
because of his intellect. But what he's telling us here
is that what he's confirming is he's saying that this is who
he was, one that worshiped the creature. rather than the creator,
or the creature. One that served tradition, rather
than serve the Lord. One time, shortly after the Lord
called me, from darkness into light, I saw the truth. We had
left the church, false religion that we were at, and went to
a believing church, a gospel church. I ran into somebody I
cared for quite a bit in Target, And I started to share the gospel
with her. She told me these words, and
I'll never forget these words. She said, what I believe was
good enough for my mother, and it was good enough for my father,
and it was good enough for my husband, and it's good enough
for me. And I've not talked to her since.
Why did I tell you that? Well, because she is zealous
of tradition. She didn't come to a man. She
didn't come to the Lord Jesus Christ. She came to tradition.
She came to a religious experience. She came to, she's morally, you would see
her as being very morally sound, but that's what man-made work
salvation does, is it cleans up the outside. What does the
Lord say? He said, you're whited sepulchers. On the outside you
look good. You've been bleached up real
pretty but on the inside You're full of dead men's bones. See
the Lord looks all the way down in the heart doesn't look on
the outside He looks at the heart doesn't he? If my traditions traditions are
good the tradition not necessarily a bad thing I You can call the
ordinances that we do here our tradition. Our tradition is to
take the Lord's table the first Sunday of the month. That's a
tradition that we have. We also try to eat, have a meal
together, once every other month or so. Those are good traditions
to have, aren't they? But we don't have those traditions
as part of our righteousness. Oh, the Lord's table is to do
in remembrance of Him. It's to point to Him. It's to
show Him. So if my traditions, do not absolutely, 100%, point
to the Lord Jesus Christ. As far as salvation is concerned,
then they're of man, they're not of God, they're of man. That's
what Paul's saying here. It's not of God, it's of man. That's the difference. Salvation
is of God, it's not of man. But traditions are of man. Anything
to do with salvation that a man does traditionally, In tradition,
what do I mean by that? Well, in tradition, what they
would do is they would have altar calls where you'd come down to
the front, you'd have to pray a prayer, you'd have to do this, you'd
have to do that. You won't find that in the scripture. It's nowhere in the
Bible. Nowhere. Nowhere. The Lord said, repent,
repentance is of God. He has to give repentance. Repentance
is not the outpouring of your heart unto the Lord. Repentance
is the, well, first of all, God has to give the repentance, but
whenever repentance is given, you will outpour your heart.
But that's not, the repentance comes from God. It's a changed
mind. He changes your mind about who you are and who he is. Then
he gives faith to believe his son. That's genuine repentance
and faith. Traditions of men are not salvation. These men are men, they're not
of God. This is the reason there's so many churches claiming to
have the truth is that they have these traditions that they've
held onto. Or they have a tradition that
they've left or haven't left. Salvations of the Lord. Salvations
of the Lord. It's not in man. It's not in
our tradition. It's not in our tradition. Traditions of men
are not salvation. Most of them are law-keeping
traditions. I know people in my family that
will not mow their yard on Sunday. They won't do it. They think
they're keeping the Sabbath. First of all, the Sabbath is
Saturday, just so everybody knows. So they got that backwards. And I'm not poking fun at them.
They're just ignorant. They don't know any better. The Lord hasn't taught
them. I would have been the same if the Lord hadn't taught me.
But they will not mow their yard on Sunday. But they'll drive
45 minutes to church. That's the work. It's contradicting. Tradition becomes your righteousness
if you let it. Do we see what I'm saying here?
If you allow tradition, it will become your righteousness. You
will hold to that tradition. Just as that one poor woman I
was talking about said it was good enough for my husband, it's
good enough for me. That's her righteousness. What she has done
for God is her righteousness, and she hasn't done anything
for God. That's the problem. She thinks she did. But her tradition
says you're good on your own. You're good enough. Lord said,
I'll disannul your covenant. You made a covenant with death
and with hell you're in agreement. He said, I'm gonna disannul that
covenant. That covenant will not stand with me. There's only
one covenant that God looks to for the salvation of his people
and it is a covenant of grace given to his people before time
ever began. The Sabbath. Sabbath was given
to show that we must rest on the Sabbath as God did. We enter into His rest. He is the Sabbath. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the Sabbath. We rest in Him, His finished
work. We rest in what He accomplished. We don't add to it. There's no
work to be done. That's what the Sabbath was for,
to point to Christ. The Lord is the Sabbath. Do we
see that? He is the Sabbath. Some worship tradition rather
than the truth. Romans chapter one tells us, they change the
truth of God into a lie and worship and serve the creature more than
the creator who is blessed forever, amen. Men worship self, we're
the creature. We worship our traditions, we
worship our customs. Anything that points to the flesh,
that's what men tend to worship. This is what Paul is warning
against here. He's saying, no, I was in the
tradition. The Lord called me out of the tradition. He says,
I was zealous of the tradition of my father's, meaning he was
all in. He was constantly doing the traditions
of his father. He's constantly trying to live
the law. But he said, whenever the gospel
came, whenever the Lord revealed himself, he said, no, salvation
is not of man, it's of God. It's not up to my tradition.
My tradition doesn't help me at all, because it's pointing
to me. My tradition is saying, look at me, look at me, look
at me. What does the gospel say? Look
to Christ. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
It never says look to me in any way, shape, or form. It always
points to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one that God is pleased with.
That's what the gospel does. Ask yourself this question. Do
you worship tradition? Do you worship tradition? Or
do you worship the Lord Jesus Christ? And you know the truth.
You know the truth. Today is Easter. And I think
this is the first time I've mentioned that on Easter, whenever I stand
up here. Why? Well, because today men and women
are worshiping a day, not a person. Men and women are celebrating
a God of their tradition that doesn't exist. the God of their
tradition that doesn't exist. You'll see he has risen. If you
have any social media, you're going to buckle up because you're
going to see he has risen on there about 300 times. But he
is. He is. But they're preaching
a gospel that limits him and what he done. They're preaching
his resurrection actually didn't accomplish anything. It just
made it possible. That's what they're preaching.
That's not the true gospel. That's the tradition of men.
The tradition of man will always take the gospel and pervert it.
The tradition of man will always take the gospel and make it about
themselves, what they must do to satisfy God, what they must
do to please God. God said, I'm not gonna have
it. I will not share my glory with you. I won't have it. They're worshiping a God that
cannot do as he wills unless they let him. Their God didn't
accomplish anything on the cross. And I'm gonna say this sarcastically,
it's almost like you say, well, bless his heart, he did the best
he could, but he couldn't get it done. That's just foolish,
isn't it? But it's true. This is what they're
preaching. This is what they're saying.
That he shed his blood for everyone, all together, everyone. There's
a sign coming up the road right here that said he died. See if
I can remember what it says now. He died for our sins. for all
of our sins." I said, well, if He died for all of our sins and
all of our sins have been put away, it says the payment was
made. That's what it says, the payment was made for all of our
sins. If that's the case, that transaction actually happened,
everybody's going to heaven. Because God was satisfied with
what Christ offered to Him. God was satisfied. But we know
that that's not the truth, is it? No. They say that the blood
of Christ was shed for everyone without exception. But yet some
people go to hell because they don't make the blood effectual.
So what does the blood have to do with salvation? No, the blood
accomplished something. The blood washed away the sin
of God's people that he was dying for. The blood secured salvation
for the Lord's elect. The Lord actually successfully
100% redeemed his people from their
sin, from their self, from Satan. From the bondage of the law,
he satisfied justice for us. God's not looking to man for
anything, certainly not in his salvation. God's looking to his
son. God's gospel is how he saves
sinners, not by man's tradition. Not by man's tradition. Man's
tradition says that the birth, the life, the death, burial,
and resurrection is the gospel. Did you know that that's not
true? That's not true. The gospel is how Christ Jesus
lived, how Christ Jesus died, how Christ Jesus was buried,
and how he was resurrected according to the scriptures. He accomplished
something. He didn't offer man anything. He offered the Father. His soul
was made an offering for sin. He offered himself up to God.
By his own blood purged our sin and sat down. Salvation was accomplished. The gospel is this. Salvation
is of the Lord and it is finished. Salvation is of the Lord and
he accomplished it successfully. Gospel is how in this glorious
single act of sacrifice and offering, he delivered his people, his
elect, from the jaws of hell. That's the good news. He didn't
just save us from ourself, he saved us from our sin, he saved
us from everything that was contrary to us. He took the handwriting
of ordinances out of the way, which were contrary to us, and
what'd he do with them? Killed them to his cross, didn't
he? They're gone. They're gone. He saved us from
our sin. And spot of us to spot of us,
he successfully redeemed everyone he loves. Man's tradition says
that Jesus loves everybody without exception. That's what they say.
God loves everybody. But yet there's some that's going
to go to hell. So God's love really couldn't
accomplish that which he wanted to do because I didn't let him. What does the love of God have
to do with salvation then? No, his love accomplished what
it set out to do. See, he's God, and that's the
part where the word God has been thrown around so much that we
become desensitized to it. But God, we're talking about
the supreme being, the alpha, the omega, the one that does
all things after the counsel of his own will, and none can
stay his hand or say unto him, what doest thou? He spoke the
world into existence. This is God. He does whatsoever
He will, when He wants to, how He wants to, with who He wants
to. He's God. We're just creatures of dust. We have no power, no
authority. We have no will that would choose
Him. Our will is bound to our nature. He's God. He's God. He must do the choosing. He must
do the calling. He must do the saving. All of
it, as we heard the first hour. And those that He loved, To this foolish person, I'm compelled
to ask, what does the love of God have to do with salvation
if he loves everybody? It doesn't matter at all. I said
this, Jackie, I said this at Brian's
wedding. I asked him, I said, Brian, do
you love every woman here the same way that you love Elisa?
And he shook his head no. I was like, that's a good answer
because if you'd have said yes, I don't know how long this marriage
would have worked. She may just walk out and not even finished it. You
have a particular love. Particular love. Your love is
set on her. You have a particular affection
set on her. Your hearts are knit together
with her. This is the same with God and his church. This is the
same with God and his elect. He has a particular love for
his people. And that love secured our salvation. It was love that drew salvation's
plan. That was the motivation of the father was love. It's
his great love wherein he loved us. And the son was obedient
unto death for the love that he had for the father to glorify
him. I said this the first hour and
I told you I'd be saying this again, but that's okay. It needs to be said twice. Man's
tradition says that the Lord was resurrected to make your
justification a possibility. That's what tradition says. What
does God say? He was raised again because of
our justification. That word for is the same word
as because. He was raised again because we have been justified
freely by his grace. If he was resurrected for everyone,
then everyone will be in heaven. Nobody will be in hell. But he
was not resurrected for everyone. He was resurrected for his creatures
that he chose in the covenant of grace. If his death, burial, and resurrection
was for everybody, why does anyone go to hell? Either he's a failure as a God,
or that would be the only possible outcome, wouldn't it? He's a
failure. He didn't accomplish what he
wanted to accomplish. The tradition of men, brethren,
has done nothing but attempted to dethrone God and put themselves
upon his throne. That's what the tradition of
men do. The tradition of man says, look at me, look at me.
God's gospel says, look to Christ and live. Come to Christ. You
that are labored and heavy laden, I'll give you rest, he said.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly
of heart, and you shall find rest to your soul. For my yoke
is easy and my burden is light. Why is the burden light? Because
the work's finished. The work's finished. Being yoked
with him means you don't do anything. Don't do anything. To believe the lie that man can
dethrone God is nothing more than signing your own personal
reservation for eternal death, eternal hell. This is why we
do not preach isms and schisms and traditions and all that other
stuff. We preach Christ and him crucified.
We don't preach works. We preach Christ and him crucified.
As soon as a man starts preaching works, if we do preach works,
we are very clear. that what we're doing is looking
to Christ. And that's the only way that
a believer bears fruit is looking to Christ, not self. We don't
ever look at ourselves. We look at the fruit that I've been.
You can't see it. If you could see it, we would
glory in it. You know it's true. And we would make traditions
out of it. We would just make a bigger mess
than we already got. No, we look to Christ. That is all. We don't preach
tradition. We preach Christ in him crucified,
the one that actually successfully redeemed his people. He shed
his own blood to wash away our sin. He didn't shed his own blood
to make an offering to man. He shed his blood to wash away
the sin of his people. He didn't die in order to, uh,
that you, everybody might live. He died to make his people alive. That was his purpose. His soul was made an offering
for sin that we would be made the righteousness of God in him.
Not maybe, not could be if you'll let it, not might be, it is finished. It is finished. Without our opinion,
without our contribution, without our approval, without our recommendation,
without our input in any way, shape, or form, God saved his
people from their sin. To reiterate this, what Paul
is talking about here, being zealous of tradition, he's letting
you know he renounced it. I love the fact that he tells
us how he renounced it, because it was of grace. He says, whenever
Look in verse 15, but when it pleased God, you see that that's,
that's the start right there. When it, but, but God, as we
heard last hour, that's the, that's the interjection. But
when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and
called me by his grace to reveal his son in me, that I might preach
him among the heathen immediately, I conferred not with flesh and
blood. Now this was a revelation of Jesus Christ. This was the
revelation of Jesus Christ. He renounced all of those former
traditions. He saw who God was. And in seeing
the Lord, we see that we're the sinner that can't keep the law.
We're the sinner that can't please God. We're the sinner that can't
do anything to work righteousness. The Lord had to work the righteousness
because he was the righteous one that we never could. The
good news of the gospel is, is he imparts that freely by his
grace to his people. God is not looking to what I
do or do not do. God is looking to his son. He's
looking to his son on the behalf of his people. This is why to
be zealous and trust a false tradition of men is futile. It's futile. Trusting in tradition
will not bring about salvation. If those traditions point to
me in anything I do, anything I do, They're not of the Lord,
they're of man. They're of man. God's gospel
says Christ is all, and he gets all the glory, and God's people
love it that way. I said that the first hour, too. That's the
truth. We love it that way. I love him getting all the glory.
I don't want any glory. He's worthy. We're not worthy.
We're not worthy. He's not a puny, helpless God.
He's the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not baby Jesus either. No, he's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He was a baby and he grew up. He grew up and he saved his people
from their sin. He redeemed us back to God. And
I love this, not in part, but in whole, completely, not part
of the way, all the way. He didn't do half the job. No,
we get, We get the whole apple. You understand what I'm saying?
He'd give every bit of it, all of it. It's his salvation. We've renounced the tradition
of men. Tradition won't save us. We've renounced that because
we have a person. We have the Lord Jesus Christ,
and in him there is salvation. We are complete in him. We don't
have time for traditions of men. Look at me. We don't do that
anymore. We look to Christ alone, who is salvation. We're saved
by grace alone, perfectly righteous by his own doing, set apart for
the master's use by his own doing. We now have a right to enter
the throne room of God by the blood of Jesus Christ and there
be peace spoken to us. The scepter will always raise
for the Lord's people when we approach the throne of grace
because of the finished work of Christ. This is what he accomplished. This is what he accomplished.
There's nothing left for us to do but believe. Somebody said,
okay, well, that's the work you have to do. No, if you find yourself
believing, it's because he gave you repentance and faith to believe.
He gets all the glory. We don't get any glory in this.
Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. Can you relate to that statement?
I believe, Lord, help my unbelief. Cause me to see Christ, give
me repentance. Repentance is not a one-time
thing. No, growing in grace is you're getting more repentance.
The Lord's increasing faith. He's showing himself more and
more and less and less of yourself. Growing is down, not up. The
way to God is down, not up. He's the only one that can do
that. Brethren, there's nothing left for us to do but believe.
And if we believe, it's because he's given faith to believe.
Do not be zealous of tradition. Do not be zealous of tradition.
Don't be fooled. Look to Jesus Christ. Look to the Lord Jesus
Christ as all of your righteousness, all of your acceptance before
God, because he is the only one God accepts. I'm thankful he
finished the work, aren't you? Let's pray. Father, we ask that
you would take these words and you would bless it to our understanding
for your glory, for your purpose. Thank you that you saved your
people. In Christ's name, amen.