Grace Alone (Part 14): Boasting - Where is your glory located?

Today we are ending a series that we've been in most of the fall.

We've called it Grace Alone.

We've been studying the book of Galatians.

And I know that you may think, hey, it's December, can't we move to Christmas?

But we're gonna finish Galatians, and there is a Christmas tie in here, so you'll see this uh in just a little bit.

And the reason that we chose Galatians this fall was really twofold.

One was this is the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation, when a group of reformers looked at the church, basically, that was, and said, We think the church has missed it on something that's really important.

That is, the church has become about works, doing things so that we gain acceptance from God.

It's become about indulgences where we can buy our way out of something.

It's become about something other than the work of Jesus Christ.

And then the second reason is that Galatians is really all about grace.

And so often what happens in our modern world is even if we give credence to the idea of needing grace, we slip back into kind of a works approach to God, where we say, Yes, I know that it was Jesus' grace that worked in my life, but at the end of the day, what we hope for, what we long for is to do well enough that we can say, I've earned my way with God.

And so week after week after week, we have we have just gone back to this idea of grace because this is what Galatians does.

And when we come to the very end of the end of the book, Paul, who is the human author of Galatians, says in verse 11 that he is writing with his own hand in big letters.

This would be the equivalent of texting today in all caps.

All right, this is kind of his way of saying, I want you to get this, understand what I'm about to say.

And so, in a way, he's going to summarize what this letter has been about to the people that he's now now kind of writing to.

And you may, as I do at times, say, well, okay, grace is a nice theme.

I get it.

But a lot of times what we really want is we want God to help us become better at something, to improve our relationships, to help us be more successful, to help us be more fulfilled in this world.

And so we don't often think about grace as being something that's that's so significant that we need to hear about it all the time.

But let me ask you a question.

If you were to be offered, and I can't offer you this, but but if somebody could offer you this and say, listen, I will give you millions and millions and millions of dollars, or you can have joy and fulfillment and contentment in your life from now on.

Which one would you choose?

Now, my guess is some of you are like, well, give me the money because it will take care of the joy, the contentment, and the fulfillment.

But but if we're honest, what probably most of us want, the reason that we want money, the reason we want relationships, the reason we want success, the reason we want something in our lives is because what we believe is on the other side of that is joy, it's contentment, it's fulfillment, and we think that if we can just have that next kind of success or that next level, that then we'll experience genuine joy, genuine contentment, genuine fulfillment in our lives.

But what I want to do today is just point to two realities about how this world really works, that Paul points to here at the end of Galatians.

Two realities that that shape our lives and understanding them is so important.

And the first one is this, and that is that everyone boasts in something.

Now he uses this word boast here a couple of different times.

And when you and I think of boasting, what we think about naturally is somebody who is basically going to be trash talking or bragging.

I've seen a little bit of this in my house recently.

My wife has been playing uh Words with Friends with two of my sons, and they are trash talking about the words that they play and accusing each other of cheating.

And so that's that's how we think about boasting.

But boasting in the Bible is actually this really significant theme.

In fact, if you were to trace the word boast or boasting throughout the Bible with a concordance, you can find that online very easily.

What you would see is that this is actually significant in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, because we're told about boasting.

And what boasting really is, is it is whenever we exalt in something or have confidence in something, and the way that it was used in the Old Testament was that people would boast before they went into battle.

Now they weren't boasting like, oh, I did it, but what they were doing is they would boast as a way to feel confident, to say, I have enough for what's ahead of me.

And in the context of Galatians, when he talks about boasting here, if we go back to chapter 5, verse 26, we looked at this several weeks ago, he said this, let us not become conceited.

And the word conceited here is a word that means empty of glory.

In other words, the reason that we boast in something, the reason that that we that we try to shore up our way of thinking about our lives is because down deep we feel empty of glory, and we think that if I can get a verdict from something outside of me to tell me that I'm okay, that I have enough, that then I'll start to feel good.

Now I mentioned that boasting's used extensively throughout the Bible.

Let me just show you one instance.

This is Jeremiah chapter 9, verse 23 and 24.

Jeremiah 9:23

It says this, this is what the Lord says.

Let not the wise boast in their wisdom, let not the strong boast in their strength, let not the rich boast in their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this that they have understanding and know me.

That I am the Lord, who exercises kindness and justice and righteousness on the earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord.

So what does he say?

He says, Here's what will happen.

You can boast about your wealth, about your wisdom, about how smart you are, about how powerful you are.

But he says, I don't want you to boast in those things.

Boast about this, that you know me, that you know who God is, that you understand his kindness and his justice and his righteousness.

Understand that that is your safest boast.

But what this is also pointing to is that we'll all boast in something.

For some of us, it will be how smart we are.

For some of us, it will be how good looking we are.

For some of us, it will be how wealthy we are.

For some of us, it will be how moral we are.

For some of us, it will be how other centered we are and how we serve the greater good of the world.

For some of us, it will be how cool that we think we are.

But whatever it is, we'll all have something that we say, this is the thing that makes me say I'm okay in this world.

I saw a story some time ago that was online, and this story I thought uh was interesting.

I don't know if this is an entirely legit interaction, but it makes a point either way.

It's written from this young woman who is 25 by her own admission and considers herself hot.

This is what she says.

I'm going to be honest with what I'm going to say here.

I'm 25 this year and I'm very pretty.

I have style and good taste.

I wish to marry a guy with a$500,000 annual salary or above.

You might say that I'm greedy, but an annual salary of$1 million in New York City is only considered as middle class.

My requirement is not high.

Is there anyone in this forum with an income of over$500,000 annual salary?

And if so, are you married?

And I want to ask you, what should I do to marry a rich person such as yourself?

Among those I've dated, it seems that the richest I've ever been able to date is somebody with an annual income of$250,000.

This seems to be my upper limit.

If someone's going to move into a high-cost residential area in the western part of New York City, then a$250,000 income is just simply not enough.

So I'm here to humbly ask a few questions.

Where do most rich bachelors hang out?

Please give names of the bars, restaurants, and gymnasiums where they work out.

At which age should I target, or which age group should I target?

Why are the wives of most rich men only average looking?

I have met a few girls who don't have the looks and are not that interesting, and yet they seem able to marry rich guys.

How do you decide who can be your wife and who can only be your girlfriend?

My target right now is to get married.

And she signs it, Ms.

Pretty.

So then the CEO of a company responds in this forum.

He says, I've read your post with great interest.

I would guess that there are a lot of girls like you out there who have a similar question like yours.

Please allow me to analyze your situation as a professional investor.

My annual income is more than$500,000, which means I meet your requirement.

From the standpoint of a business person, it's a bad decision to marry you.

So let me explain.

Put the details aside.

What you're trying to do is you're trying to exchange your beauty for my money.

Person A provides beauty, person B pays for it.

It's a fair and square deal.

However, there's one deadly problem here.

Your beauty will fade.

But my money will not be gone without any good reason.

The fact is, my income might increase from year to year, but you can't be prettier year after year.

Hence, from the viewpoint of economics, I am an appreciating asset, and you are a depreciating asset.

And it's not just normal depreciation, but exponential depreciation.

If that is your only value asset, your value will be much worse in ten years than it is today.

By the terms we use on Wall Street, every trading has a position.

Dating with you is also a trading position.

If the trade value dropped, we sell, and it's not a good idea to keep it for the long term.

The same goes for the marriage that you want.

It might be cruel to say this, but in order to make a wiser decision, any asset with great depreciation value should be sold or leased.

Anyone with over$500,000 annual income is not a fool.

We would only date you, but we will not marry you.

I would advise you to forget looking for any clues about how to marry a rich guy.

And by the way, you could make yourself to become one of the rich people who makes over$500,000.

Then this will have a better chance of you finding a rich fool.

And then he signs it.

Now, why do I read that?

You may say, well, it's entertaining.

Well, uh mildly, but but I read that because here's what's happening.

It's really easy to see that for the young woman in this scenario, her sense of boasting was in her beauty.

She's saying, you know what?

I know I'm pretty, I know I have style, I know I'm interesting.

Why can't I find what I'm looking for?

But do you know what his boasting was?

It was his wealth and his power and maybe his ability to write a snarky column.

And so he's boasting just as much as she is.

And what happens for both of those individuals is they are putting their long-term sense of success and their long-term sense of well-being in something.

And it's the same thing that almost everybody does, but maybe not quite as obviously.

You know, when kids first learn to kind of do something, they're totally about getting that glory that they're empty of.

Mom, dad, watch me, watch me.

And then when they get a little older, that they learn that saying that is not socially appropriate.

And so they learn how to get the watch me in a different way.

You know, if somebody's 20 years old saying, watch me, watch me, you're a little like, that's a little weird.

But as we get older, we do the same thing, just in different ways.

So how do you know what it is that you boast in?

Here in Galatians chapter 6, I think there are some clear hints to this.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

Verse 12, those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised.

And this is pointing to pride.

Or maybe to a sense of judgment, because what they were doing is they were looking at those who weren't circumcised, which was a religious practice to try to garner a sense of favor with God, and they were looking down on people who didn't do the same things that they did, didn't do it the way that they did it.

Now I'm not going to go back and trace circumcision, but Paul comes back to this because this has been such an important theme in this letter, and he's basically saying here, you know that you can seek God either through grace or through effort, and what circumcision is is through effort.

And so here he's referring to this, but at the same time, what we see is that whenever you look down on somebody for the way that they do things or the way that they are, what you're doing is you're showing what you boast in.

Here's the second thing.

Second part of verse 12.

The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ.

One of the ways we know what we boast in is because we're afraid.

We're afraid of what will happen if we're found out not to be as together as we want to be in an area of our lives.

And then we see one other thing here, verse 13, and that is we're willing to pretend or we're full of hypocrisy.

Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be so to keep the law.

Um, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh.

Do you see what's happening here?

What's happening is these people were the people who were for the circumcision, and so they were proud in their standing, they were afraid of any kind of residual effect if they didn't tow the line, and they were willing to pretend to be more together than they were.

So let me just drive this into where we live.

Because you may say, well, circumcision, that that doesn't apply to me, and I get that, and it probably doesn't in the same way.

But here's how this works in our lives: the way you can tell what you boast in is because you're willing to look down on somebody else who doesn't do it the way that you do it, you're afraid of being found out, and you'll pretend in order to keep up the illusion that something's better than it is.

And that's how you know what you boast in.

Let's just think about this from high school.

If you're in high school, this is something maybe you can see if you were in high school at some point.

Maybe you remember this.

I'm guessing all of you were in high school at some point.

So in high school, there's two kinds of students.

There are the students who decide up front that they want to get good grades.

And so what they do is they go through school believing that if they get good grades, that it says something good about their life, and that they'll be able to get into better schools, and if they get into better schools, they'll get better jobs, they'll have better lives.

And so getting good grades really matters to these students.

And so what happens is they go into school and they try to get good grades, and to the kids who don't get good grades, they just kind of look down on them like they aren't worthy of the same level of respect.

Sometimes they're afraid of what happens if they don't get good grades.

They won't get into the school, they won't get the money, they won't get the job, and they're convinced if they get one B in like high school algebra at some point that their life will never amount to anything.

You know the kind here that I'm talking about, right?

And sometimes they're even willing to pretend that they're more together, that they're that they're smarter than they really are, because that's become their identity.

Now there's another group.

You know this group too.

This is the group who decides early on that grades are for people not like them, and they're much cooler because they don't care as much about it.

Right?

And this group goes through high school basically saying, I'm not like those people who are so obsessed with getting those good grades.

I know that I'll be just fine whether I go to that school or this school, it's all good.

And they're willing to say, I'm afraid of appearing as if I try too hard.

And so even if they study for a test, what do they say?

Oh, I didn't study at all.

Because they're too cool to study.

No.

The reason that I point this out is as we age, our issues may be different, but the way that you know what has become most important to you, what your boast is, what you're saying, this is what I need in order to validate me, to tell me that I'm okay, is that you can say what is it that I'm proud about or I'm willing to judge other people about, what is it I'm afraid if it isn't true, what it says about me, and where am I willing to pretend?

And if any of those are true, then there's a chance that that's something you boast in.

And most of us boast not just in one thing, but in many things.

We have a list of things that we want to be true about us because they tell us what's important in our lives.

But here's what Paul is doing.

He's saying, saying that everyone ultimately is going to boast in something, but even when we boast in something, he wants us to know that there's only one safe boast.

And this is the second big idea.

That there's only one safe boast.

Verse 14.

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

So here he basically says that the answer isn't that we say, Oh, I'm no longer going to care about how I look or how much money I make or how successful I am or how moral I am or how my kids do.

He says, That's not what I'm saying to you.

What I'm saying to you is I boast in one thing primarily, and that is what Jesus Christ has done on the cross.

That this is the only secure and safe place for me to put my hope and my desires for the future.

There's a song that we sometimes sing around here.

It's called In Christ Alone.

And in it, the the lyrics read like this It says, In Christ alone my hope is found.

He is my light, my strength, my song.

This cornerstone, this solid ground, firm through the fiercest drought and storm.

What heights of love, what depths of grace of peace.

When fears are still, then strivings cease.

My comforter, my all in all, here in the love of Christ I stand.

Do you hear the language?

He says, My strivings can cease when I understand that that my standing, my security is in Christ alone.

Then hear the second verse.

In Christ alone, who took on flesh, which is a reference to what we celebrate at Christmas, fullness of God and helpless babe, the gift of love and righteousness, scorned by the ones he came to save, till on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

For every sin on him was laid, here in the death of Christ I live.

See, what that song is pointing to is this idea that our only secure boast is in Christ, and that it's in what Jesus Christ has done, not in anything that you and I do.

And this has been the whole point of Galatians.

And if you've been here throughout this series, what has happened is it's just kind of beat on us week after week after week to say, you don't get to take credit for your own goodness.

But there's a tendency inside of us to want to be able to say, Yes, I was saved by grace initially, but now I'm doing pretty well.

And what we need to keep seeing is that our standing is never on how well we do, but always on what Jesus Christ has done.

There's an account in the Christmas narrative where Mary first encounters an angel.

And she's told that she's going to have a child, and she says, How can this be?

I've never been with a man.

How can this be?

And do you know what the angel tells her?

What does he say?

He says, You have found favor with God.

Now notice what he doesn't say.

He doesn't say you've earned favor with God.

He says, You found favor with God.

Now you may think that I'm just splitting hairs here about the use of these words.

But here's the significance.

What Jesus didn't do for Mary or God didn't do by having Jesus be her son is he didn't say, I looked over the landscape to see who the perfect teenager was.

By the way, that's an oxymoron, perfect teenager.

And I'm going to choose Mary because of how good she is.

Well, what he does, he says, You found favor with God.

This isn't because of what you've done.

This is this is entirely God's doing on your behalf.

So even in the Christmas narrative, in Galatians, in the whole of the Bible, our boast isn't that somehow we came in grace and now we're going on in our own goodness, but it's always coming back and saying, I remember or I know to the core of my being that I need the grace of God.

That's only given through Jesus Christ.

And this is part of how we come to turn our boasts from the things of this world, the things that seem important to us to Jesus Christ.

We remember how desperately we need grace.

Verse 14 May I never boast except in the cross of Christ.

What does he say?

He says, I only have one thing that I can really say is important about me, and that is I've come to understand that what I deserve is not what I'm going to get because of what Jesus Christ has done.

We've used this line a few times in this series, but Sinclair Ferguson wrote this, he said, The glory of the gospel is that God has declared Christians to be rightly related to him in spite of their sin.

And he says, This, but our greatest temptation is to smuggle character into his work of grace.

In other words, our greatest temptation is to say, Yes, yes, yes, I know that it's grace.

But God really does like how I'm doing it now.

Instead of continuing to say, this is all a result of what Jesus Christ has done.

And then what we need to do is we need to not just simply remember this, but we need to celebrate it, worship it, savor it.

This is what it means to boast ultimately is to say, my great boast, my great satisfaction is in what Jesus Christ has done.

That we turn to our Maker more than just what He's given us.

You see, over the season, we'll revel in a lot of good things.

Some of us will revel in our good fortune and how nice our houses look, or we'll revel in the family we have around us, we'll revel in good food or in the beverages that we consume, we'll revel in the gifts that we're able to give or receive.

But what we need to do at some point is we need to have as much joy and satisfaction in what Jesus Christ has given to us as we do in all the other trappings of this world.

And the only way we'll get there is to say, I don't deserve what I've been given.

See, it's really possible for many of us to have a primarily intellectual faith.

And what I mean by that is what we'll do is we'll say, I believe the events of Christmas, that Jesus came to this earth and was God in the flesh, lived a perfect life, went to the cross, died, was raised again, so that if I believe in him, I have a substitute.

And that's all necessary to say, yes, I believe in the events.

But what we can then do is we can go through our lives and say this is all transactional, it's all intellectual, and what really motivates us, what really moves us is something completely different.

In other words, our real boast is not in Jesus Christ and his cross, but our real boast is in whatever it is that we say this is what's most important.

And what Paul's doing here, again, big letters, screaming, he's saying, I want you to worship, I want you to celebrate, I want this to be the thing that you are most satisfied in.

And when this is the thing that you become most satisfied in, here's what it does for you: it frees you.

Because now you're not dependent on saying, I'm keeping my looks well past age 25, or I'm going to make it in my career, or I'm going to have financial security, or I'm going to have great kids, or I'm going to be moral, or I'm going to have a mission and do something that really matters, or I'm going to be cool and be well thought of by my friends.

But instead we can say, I can pursue those things because what is most important has already been decided.

And this is what he's talking about in verse 14, when he says that I've been crucified to the world, that I've severed basically my sense of dependence on those things for my well-being, because now my boast is in something so much bigger.

And what this will do is this will make us stable.

Verse 17, from now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

Paul had been persecuted.

And what he does here is he says, I boast in Christ.

You can beat my body, you can create challenges, difficulties for me, but but here's what matters is not this world and not what happens to me here, but but that I have come to know who Jesus is.

You know, if I have a hope, a prayer for you this December, this Christmas season, it's that you would be able to say, whatever's happening in my world, whatever's good, whatever's not good, whichever way kind of my life seems to be going, as important as those things are, my real security, my real boast, my real happiness, what I really worship is Jesus.

Because that will give you a security that transcends whatever's happening in your world today.

You and I, we will worship something.

We'll either worship something that's temporal and can't ultimately satisfy, or we'll worship the transcendent God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and who through Jesus Christ has made a way for us to stand secure before him.

The only question is which thing will you boast about, worship in this year?

And if we worship in Christ, then we have security moving forward.

So we're going to celebrate communion in all three locations.

I'm going to pray and then set up communion here in Wexford and each of the campus pastors in their location.

So would you pray with me?

Father, as we're gathered today, I ask very simply that you would help each of us to see the things that we boast in, to realize that we do worship, and to really understand that only worshiping you, only boasting in Jesus Christ is safe.

God, it's hard to believe that sometimes because it sometimes seems like what's real is the direction of things in this world.

How things are going for me.

So help me, help each person to see that the way that we're ultimately freed is in Jesus.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.