Grace Alone (Part 3): Choices - What drives decisions?

Well, let me ask you today, how do you make decisions?

And that's a fairly simple question, and you may say, well, I just kind of do what seems right, but but why do you decide, and how do you decide what you think is really right or best when it comes to making decisions?

And my guess is most of us make decisions that we think will ultimately make us happy.

And even if we don't use that rubric or that terminology, we decide things on the basis of saying, if I choose this, if I do this, then this is what's going to happen and this will be better for me.

It'll lead to good things in my life.

Unless you think I'm making too much of that, let me just give you a very simple example.

When it comes to flossing, I would say that you make that decision on the basis of your perceived happiness, whatever decision you make.

If you floss with regularity, you floss for one of two probably basic reasons.

You floss because you want to have teeth that last well into your old age, and you say, you know what, this little slimy piece of string and kind of the whatever happens with that, I do it because I want my teeth to last.

Or you do it because when you go to the dentist and you sit with the hygienist and they give you the talk about flossing, you want to be able to say, I floss.

And if you don't floss, you don't floss because you go through a moment where you say, you know what, I don't really want to floss today.

I want to go to bed, I don't want to spend a few minutes with the slimy string thing.

Either way, what you're doing is you're choosing based on your perceived happiness.

In one instance, you're saying, my future happiness depends on me flossing, and in the other one, you're saying my present happiness depends on me not flossing.

But you're making a decision based on perceived happiness.

And you may think, well, that has very little to do with the Bible.

But we're studying Galatians this fall, and in studying Galatians, we're doing this because it is a book that was instrumental to the reformers, and this fall is 500 years from when the Reformation happened.

And the reason this book was so instrumental is because this book talks about grace and grace alone.

That's what we've called the series.

And what we believe is that when we understand the message of grace, that it impacts absolutely everything in our lives.

And how Galatians unfolds is it talks about this issue of getting the gospel right, understanding grace, but then in Galatians chapter 5, what we're told is that the result of the Spirit living inside of us, the result of getting the gospel right, having God's spirit alive in us, is what's called the fruit of the spirit.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

It's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control.

But those first three, love, joy, peace, are things that all of us, whether we see ourselves as spiritual or spirit-filled or not, live with the desire to say, I want my life to be characterized by more love, more joy, more peace.

That's what I want.

And what Galatians does in a roundabout way is it says, says, all of the decisions that you make, even how you see this idea of the gospel, really leads to your sense of fulfillment.

Now, Galatians chapter 2, verses 11 through 12, or 11 through 21, are about table fellowship.

Galatians 2:11–12

And I said this last weekend, you probably didn't get up and say, I want to go to church today to learn about circumcision.

And today I doubt you got up and said, I want to go to church and talk about table fellowship.

It's not one of those things that you go, that is a pressing issue for me today.

But in the time that this was written, table fellowship was a huge deal.

Here's how one New Testament scholar wrote about this.

He said, in Judaism, table fellowship before God for eating of a piece of broken bread by everyone who shares a meal brings out the fact that they all share in a blessing which the master of the house has spoken over the unbroken bread.

And what that's saying is that when people would eat together, it was their way of saying, you share in the covenant community.

And so what you had is you had Jewish believers and you had Gentile believers.

And here in Antioch, where Peter was, he's called Cephas in the passage at this time, he had begun to eat with Gentiles, but then some Jews came to town, and the Jewish believers said, What are you doing eating with those Gentiles?

And he stopped eating with the Gentiles.

And Paul comes along and he says, Listen, I'm going to confront you because what you're doing is not in light of the gospel.

You're not living in line with what you believe.

Now, by the way, this is all um paralleled in Acts chapter 10 and 11.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

It tells us that Peter had come to a place of conviction that he could eat with the Gentiles and then that he drew back from eating with them.

Some scholars think that Galatians 2, 11 through 21 is about the Jerusalem Council or about the same time as, which is Acts 15.

I think Galatians was written before Acts 15.

So I think what Galatians is doing is all the way along, is it's it's preempting kind of that council where things were resolved about the Jewish customs.

But here's what we see, and that is sometimes peace isn't the highest priority, that we need to confront one another when we don't live in line or in light of the gospel.

And we see here that belief is not necessarily that faithfulness is really greater than belief.

And what I mean when I say that faithfulness is greater than belief, Peter believed the right thing, but he wasn't acting the right way.

And so to be faithful required not just that he said and believed the right things, but that he lived the right way.

Now you may be here and you may be saying, you know what, uh, this is this is all kind of why I don't like Christianity, why I don't like church because they're always talking about rules, and I'm just one of those people who doesn't do rules.

I just do life.

But you know, the the truth is everybody has some sense of law.

And what I mean when I say that is even if you don't have a sense of law, you have something, some mental image that you're saying, this is my version of what's good and what's best, and this is what I'm moving toward.

Take a junior high student.

If you've ever been around junior high students, and I have had a few kids that have grown through that now.

Middle school students tend to think that they are being ultimately unique.

But have you ever noticed that when they're unique, what do they do?

They're unique like their other friends are unique.

And I don't say that to disparage any junior high students who are who are here.

What I'm saying is, is you, without even realizing it, create a law, a culture where you're saying, if I'm like this, then I fit in, then I have good things said about me.

In a sense, it's your righteousness.

Because the group of friends who approve that you don't dress like everybody else, but you have your own style, or that you do things your own way, or that you're you're cool in a way that other people aren't cool, is your sense of saying, This is my righteousness.

And so what I want to do today is just show you some ways that we can make decisions.

And if most of us make our decisions with this perceived idea of what will make me happy, what will give me the standing that I want, and it isn't just big decisions, but thousands of little decisions, this can make a big difference in our own love, joy, and peace.

And ultimately, what I'm going to say is that when we get and celebrate and savor the grace of Jesus Christ, that it will help us make the best decisions for love, joy, and peace.

But here's where we start, and that is in this passage, we see that Peter made a decision not to kind of live according to convictions, but to please others.

And so sometimes what we'll do is we'll make decisions to please others.

And this is why Paul charges him with hypocrisy.

Now, hypocrite in that culture was a word that was known because people who acted would put masks over their face, and they were called hypocrites.

In other words, they were actors who weren't identifying their true self but had a mask.

And so here he's saying, Peter, you're a hypocrite because you are not acting on your conviction.

Instead, you're doing something just to please a group of other people.

Now again, Acts chapter 10, 11 gives us all the background that tells us why this was an issue.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

But you may rightly ask the question, you may say, Well, isn't it right to please other people?

Isn't that a good thing?

Isn't that even a biblical thing?

And the answer is yes, it is.

Here's what we see in Romans chapter 15, verses 2 and 3.

Romans 15:2

It says, each of us should please our neighbors for their good, to build them up.

For even Christ did not please himself.

So you may say, well, okay, if Paul wrote Romans and Paul wrote Galatians, and in Romans he says, listen, you shouldn't please yourself, but you should please others, because even Christ didn't please himself.

But here he's telling Peter that he's being a hypocrite because he's trying to please people, which is it?

And this is part of why we need to think clearly when we read and study our Bible, because we can take one point and run with it and distort the overall teaching of the Bible.

Here's what I think is going on.

It's right to please people when we're serving them, it's not right to please people when we're appeasing them.

And there's a big difference.

Because when we're appeasing them against our conscience, what we're doing is we're saying, I'm just trying to get along rather than serving people.

Here's how one author wrote about this, and he's talking here about, again, this idea of righteousness.

He says this.

He said, We are all reputation conscious.

Some of us have a reputation.

It may be for piety, efficiency, leadership, spirituality, housekeeping, anything, really.

Others of us wish we had a reputation.

Once acquired or assumed, it can haunt us, dog us, browbeat us, wear us to shreds.

Bondage to a reputation can become sheer slavery.

And it's really just a form of struggling for our own righteousness.

The struggle for righteousness is qu consequently becomes a struggle for appearance, which simply means that somewhere we end up being dishonest about ourselves.

What a relief when we see Christ as the end of all this and the end of a struggle for righteousness.

See, what he's talking about here is he's saying we all struggle for a perceived version of righteousness.

This is what I was saying when I was saying even a middle school student who thinks that they're blazing their own path has some perceived idea that says, others will think well of me.

They'll think of me as being righteous or right or good if I live this way.

And whenever we choose things in order to appease other people, what we're doing is we're basically saying, this is all about my reputation.

And by the way, this is what Martin Luther meant when he said sin boldly.

Have you ever heard that phrase that that was one of his quotes?

He said, sin boldly.

What he didn't mean was offend God freely, boldly.

What he was talking about was this very issue.

When other people see something as sinful and your conscience tells you otherwise, he says, sin boldly in that moment.

In other words, feel free to say what you are saying is not in line with the gospel.

So I'm gonna go ahead and sin boldly.

So that's one way that we can make decisions, is we can just say, I'm gonna appease people.

And Paul here says, Listen, Peter, that's what you're doing.

You're a hypocrite.

Here's a second way that we can live.

And this is a way that has occurred to people in our culture, and that is we can live to please ourselves.

And we see this a little bit in verses 14 and following.

He says, This, when I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile, and not like a Jew.

How is it then that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?

Verse 15.

We who are Jews by birth and not sinful Gentiles know that a person is not justified by works.

Now, we don't like to call a whole group of people sinners today.

He says the sinful Gentiles.

But here's what I think is going on.

He is identifying with a group and saying, I am not one of those sinful people like the Gentiles.

Now, when he goes on, he says basically that this is not the way to live, but but there's a temptation here to live just to say, I'm going to live in a way since I'm not living for people that pleases myself.

And that in our culture is seen as really being the way to do life today.

Because what that is, is it's saying, you do you, you be true to your heart, you do what you need to do.

And the problem with that is that our hearts, according to the Bible, are desperately wicked.

That's what Jeremiah 17, 9 says.

It says that the heart is deceived.

And what that means is that if you are somebody who's going to follow your heart, there are times that your heart will lead you in all the wrong directions.

It will keep you from making sound, good decisions.

Now, we don't like to think about ourselves that way.

In fact, the way I like to think about myself is that I'm pretty enlightened and I have a pretty good heart and I can make decisions.

But what the teaching of the Bible is over and over again is that our hearts will lead us astray.

And this is why it isn't safe to say simply, I'm going to trust myself in this world.

But not only that, a lot of times we're not even true to our own convictions, our own version of ourselves.

You see, we have this notion of who we are and how we do life, and we say, that's who I am, that's what I'm like, that's how I live.

So for example, you may say, you know what, I'm not the kind of person who runs other people down.

And then you go to work and you find yourself talking about somebody in a way that you wouldn't want repeated.

Or you say, I'm not the kind of person who would ever do X, and then you do X.

See, we can't even be true to ourselves.

I saw this in me recently.

I was driving.

And if you've been here for a while, you've heard that this is one of my challenge spots in my life.

And my own self-perception is I'm not a jerk.

Okay, that's my own self-perception, and believe that that's important.

So I was driving, and um and and I was pulling kind of in a lane change, uh, not a lane change, I was driving by somebody on a two-lane road, and they made a lane change on me when I was probably in their blind spot.

And so I just hit my horn, not an angry honk, not like the uh-uh, but the just like, hey, you're coming over.

I had to slow down and swerve to get out of their way a little bit, and they just kept on coming.

And so, you know, they got in and I did kind of one of these, like two hands up, like like, what are you doing?

Well, there were several people in the car, and you could see that they started to talk, and then they started throwing two hands up back at me, like, ah, what are you doing?

Who are you?

Now, again, my self-perception is that I'm not a jerk.

Do you know what I did next?

I did not act in accordance with my own self-perception.

I sped up, I passed them, I cut them off.

See, I can't even drive sometimes and be true to my own convictions.

Now, I wasn't as big a jerk as I could have been.

I didn't slam on the brakes, I didn't give them another one, but but but I was a jerk.

My wife was here last night, by the way, she listened to this, and and when I got home, she gave me this.

This is little Jesus.

She said, You need to put this in your car to remind you to drive differently.

Here's my point.

And that is even at our best, if we're true to ourselves, we won't always act and live and make good decisions.

By the way, I've been told that criminals, people who've committed horrendous crimes, when they're asked about kind of, and these are people who've pled guilty, not people who will maintain their innocence.

They'll still say, you know what, I'm a good person, and and what happened, that was just an aberration.

But we need to understand that if we choose for others or we choose for ourselves, we'll be led in the wrong direction.

So that leads us to another option, and that is we can live to please God.

And we see this in verses 17 through 19, but it says this, but if in seeking to be justified in Christ, we Jews find ourselves among the sinners, doesn't that mean that Christ promotes sin?

Absolutely not.

So he's saying here, some of you, because of this teaching of justification that's in this passage where he says you'll be declared right by God, you'll say, Since I'm declared right, then can't I just do whatever I want?

He says, Absolutely not.

In essence, he's saying, but what I need to do is I need to please God.

If I rebuild what I destroyed, verse 18, then I really would be a lawbreaker.

And the idea of pleasing God runs throughout the Bible.

Galatians chapter uh 1, verse 10, Colossians chapter 1, verse 9, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 9, 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 4.

Colossians 1:9 2 Corinthians 5:9 1 Thessalonians 2:4

They all teach this idea that we are to please God.

But again, I think we need to understand some nuance here.

I'm not saying that you don't ever live to please God, but what I'm saying is it's really easy to simply go from saying, I don't live to please people, I don't live to please myself, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to live to please God.

And then what happens is we bring law into our relationship with Christ, when what we're taught in this passage is that we're justified by grace.

It's all what Christ does, not what we do.

And here's the nuance, and that is, if we live to please God, to gain acceptance, then what we're doing is we're missing the gospel.

But if we live to please God from acceptance, then that changes how we live.

And you may think I'm splitting hairs.

Let me just read to you what a few commentators have said.

Sinclair Ferguson put it this way: he said, the greatest temptation is to try to smuggle character into his work of grace.

In other words, when it comes to our justification, our standing with God, one of the greatest temptations is to try to smuggle a little bit of our own standing, our own character, and say, look God at how I've done into his work of grace.

William Barclay put it like this.

He said, There are two great temptations in the Christian life.

And in a sense, the better people are, the more susceptible they are to them.

First, there is the temptation to try to earn God's favor.

Second, the temptation to use some little achievement to compare ourselves with others to our advantage and their disadvantage.

But Christianity that has enough of self left in it to think by its own efforts, that it can please God and that by its own achievement it can show itself superior to others is not true Christianity.

Let me read that last sentence again.

Christianity that has enough of self left in it to think that by its own efforts it can please God, and that by its own achievement it can show itself superior to others is not true Christianity at all.

In other words, when we start to say, God, you know what, now I've pleased you in this way, we aren't understanding what justification is.

Or when we start to look at others and say, you know what, I'm really better than that.

You know that that Kurt guy, he's a real jerk when he draws.

I don't have that issue.

What are we doing?

We're starting to say, you know what, I'm better than, and we're not understanding the gospel.

My wife also asked me, uh, besides giving me little Jesus, she said, Are you sure you want to share that story?

Do you know why I share stories like that?

Because I think it's important that we're honest in this space and we realize that just because somebody stands on stage doesn't mean they have all their stuff together.

You see, the tendency that we have is what Sinclair Ferguson says.

You know what?

Let me let me smuggle a little bit of my goodness into this equation.

Let me think that somehow I've done something that God says, oh yeah, that that Bjorkland guy, he, you know, he's got that down.

Or I want to think of myself as somehow being better.

And do you see how this law transfers beyond even spiritual things?

How we start to say, you know what, my way, my way of seeing things, my way of doing things, my politics, my perception of bringing good to the world, it's better than other people.

And what we do in that moment is we start to say, see, my life really pleases.

God.

And even if you don't have a version of God, you have a version of the good that you're saying, my life is for the ultimate good.

What you're still doing is you're bringing your own righteousness to bear.

And against that is what this passage teaches, and here's where it's driving us, and that is to say that it is all grace and that we make our decisions in light of the gospel.

And this is the fourth point.

And we see this in verses 19 through 21.

Says this for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God or for God.

I've been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

The life that I now live in the body, I live in faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

So here he starts talking about this idea of dying to the law and living to God, being crucified with Christ.

And what he's doing here is he's saying to live in light of the gospel is actually much greater than just simply saying I'm pleasing God.

It's saying I die to myself, I'm crucified to myself, so that the life that I have now is a life that is unto God completely.

And here's maybe a couple analogies just to help us think about this.

And I'm not sure these are great analogies because any human analogy breaks down.

But if you work somewhere for a while and say it's a job that you don't particularly love or whatever, and you work at that job, here's how you probably approach the job.

You say, what time do I have to be there?

How much do you pay me?

How long do I have to be there?

When can I go home?

How much do I get for a break?

And what do I need to do?

Now that's an acceptable way to approach a job.

But you know what happens when you become a manager or a boss or an owner?

Is all of a sudden everything's different.

You no longer approach that place with the sense of saying, How little can I do?

Instead, you have ultimate freedom.

If you want to leave in the middle of the day, you can do it.

If you want to do certain things, but you have this responsibility that's grown, and all of a sudden your life has been crucified in a sense to that job.

Meaning you are now saying, I am responsible, I'll do whatever.

Maybe here's a different way to look at it.

If you've ever had kids, you know, when you're the fun uncle aunt, it's awesome, right?

You have kids come over, you play with them a little bit, you feed them sugar, you wind them up, and you say, Go home to mom and dad.

And then you become a parent.

And what happens when you become a parent is you die to yourself.

You don't really realize you're doing it when you have kids and it's wonderful and it's worth it, but but you have these kids, and all of a sudden you don't go where you want when you want, you don't spend money the way you want when you want, you don't sleep when you want, you instead arrange your life around going to little playgrounds and doing different things.

I mean, you spend more time at the you know, playland at a fast food restaurant than you ever wanted to.

And what you've done is you've you've died to yourself and you've said, you know what, there's something greater.

Now, now, how does this fit into this idea of happiness and and love, joy, peace?

And why do I say that living in light of the gospel actually brings those things?

Because you're saying, that doesn't sound so great.

It sounds like I'm just giving up my life.

Well, what it drives us to is this place right here in verse 20 where it says, The life that I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Do you hear the love?

See, if we're making our decisions based on future thinking somebody will love us more if we do certain things or are present, we're always waiting for a verdict for somebody to say, I love you.

But if we live from a platform of love of saying, God has loved me in Jesus Christ, it's been declared and it's been decided, now I know I'm loved, then we can live and move in all of our relationships without demanding that people give us something that God has already given us.

And from that we gain peace, security.

From that we gain joy.

Here's how Martin Luther put it: he said, I must hearken back to the gospel, which teaches me not what I ought to do, for that is the proper office of the law, but what Jesus Christ, the Son of God, hath done for me, to wit, that he suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death.

See, if I hearken back to that, if you hearken back to that, whether you've seen yourself as being a spiritual person or not, what it does is it is it puts you in a place where you're not demanding from everything else in your life that it give you what it can never really give you, which is that ultimate love, joy, and peace.

And this is why living in light of the gospel, making your decisions in light of the gospel, will free you and will embolden you.

I remember some time ago teaching on a weekend, and a young man came up to me afterward, a fairly earnest young man.

He said, You know, I think I really got it tonight.

He said, I want to tell you, I made a decision today.

He said, I've been living to please myself.

I've been living for myself entirely, and I heard you today, and I'm going to start living to please God.

And on the surface, that sounds so right.

But you know what it really is?

It's moving from being, to use the parable of the prodigal son Luke 15, the younger brother who says, I'm just gonna live for myself, to being the older brother that says, now I live to please God.

I live so that he'll accept me.

See, the gospel isn't live so that he'll accept you, it's you've been accepted, now really live.

Sounds small, but it makes a difference.

Because you're not living to say, God, you'll love me if you're living to say, God, you already have declared your love in Jesus Christ so fully, so perfectly.

And because of that, now I can live and please you, I can die to self, I can be crucified with you because I have full confidence in your love.

See, when you know you're loved, it's not a scary thing to say I'm going to submit because you're not saying, well, if I really submit to God, then I won't have what I need.

What you're saying instead is I know because of the goodness of God is displayed in Jesus Christ, that I have standing and that God is for me.

Mentioned earlier that when we partake of communion, we're we're we're we're coming and saying this is a place of shared blessing, where we say, everyone who shares in this piece of bread is under the blessing of the master.

Well, when we partake in communion as a community in Wexford in the strip district in the future in Butler County, what we're doing is we are coming and saying, if you have trusted in Jesus Christ, then we all share in the blessing.

And it's not about our merit, but it's about Christ's merit.

And it's a tangible reminder that we live by grace alone.

And so today we're going to partake in communion as a way to once again just say, God, it's all your grace.

It's not what I do, but it's what He has done on my behalf.

And as you come today, if you're a follower of Jesus, we invite you to do that.

You can dunk the bread in the wine and just take it and say, God, thank you that by grace you have given me love, joy, and peace.

And that I don't have to search the whole world over for it.

Now you may be here and you may be saying, Yeah, I've done that, and yet I still feel devoid of love, joy, and peace.

And maybe the reason is because even though you've believed it, what you've continued to do is say, Yes, but where I really need love is from this person or from this event or this success or this achievement.

And what you need to do is once again come and say, God, I will settle it in my soul that you, through Jesus Christ, have given me all that I need.

So the team's going to come and lead us in singing, and we'll respond.

Would you stand as I pray?

Father, help us today to move from being people who live to please others, live to please ourselves, even live to please you who live in light of the gospel.

Live from a place of acceptance.

Father, for those who maybe are gathered here today, here in the strip district, who would say, you know what, I've never really understood this.

I've always thought that I had to perform for God to love me.

Lord, I pray even in this moment that there would be a recognition of our own sinfulness, their sinfulness, my sinfulness in this, and a running to your salvation, your substitution through Jesus Christ.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's respond with the team.