Simple Faith - Just Believe

This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

For more information on our church, please visit grandparkway.org.

Well, with that, uh, Neil is out of town, but he'll be back next week.

Uh as you guys know, we did communion last week, and so we're kind of in between series.

We'll start a new series next week.

Uh, but as we're in between series, I thought, what better way to continue to remember what God has done for us as we uh focus on what simple faith looks like.

Simple faith is is the is the topic of our discussion today, and we're gonna be right back in Galatians chapter three, uh, where I think I've preached out of before here, uh, but the reality is we're gonna we're gonna take a little bit of a bigger look at the first part of Galatians chapter three, and it's simple faith.

Just believe.

If you don't have your Bible, uh you can borrow a Bible on the end of your road.

We are on page 973 of that Bible.

As you guys are turning there, let me ask you two questions.

The first question is this What is the biggest goal for your life?

What's your greatest goal in life?

I know it's February, and I know we only think about goals, say, like the end of December and come the first of January.

What's the greatest goal in your life?

My second follow-up question to that is by what means are you going to attain that goal?

How are you going to attain that goal?

I ask you that because uh I also have this complicated math equation on the front of your bulletin.

Uh if I'm glad that you guys are here, I would have seen that and been intimidated and left uh because my pre-calculus class, I'll just say this D is for diploma in uh in college, and so I have no idea what any of that says, but it just looks complicated and and and I I got nothing on that.

I just see D U and I wonder where uh the rest of that word is.

But there you go.

That's a big eraser, and I have no idea what any of this is, but the reality is that we have goals in life, and sometimes we get so jammed up in trying to manage all these different goals that life ends up being this really complicated equation that we sit down and try and take a test and we just go, no idea what that's about.

I'm just gonna go ahead and turn that back in blank.

Appreciate it.

I'm gonna go ahead and use my cue drop for the semester, and I'm out.

Uh sometimes life feels that way, especially when we start thinking about our greatest goal.

About three or four probably came to your mind, but I'm asking you, what's number one?

And how is it that you're going to attain that goal?

Let me just say that if you are a believer in Christ, uh, then your main goal is, whether you realize it or not, my main goal is, whether I realize it or not, to become more like Jesus.

That's the overall, overarching goal of my life is to become more and more like Jesus, the Son of God.

That's what Paul wrote about in Romans 8, where he said that we are conform, or excuse me, we are predestined to be conformed into the image of the Son of God.

That's what Paul talks about in Galatians 4, just the next chapter from where we're going to be today, where he says, I'm in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.

That's pretty painful.

That's pretty painful indeed.

And so our overarching goal, our main goal for life is to become more like Jesus.

And I think we would all pretty much agree with that as Christians, as believers in Christ.

Where we get kind of sideways is by what means are you going to attain that goal?

How is it that we're going to become more like Jesus?

Most of us in here, me included, I'm at the top of this list, think it's by my own effort.

Think it's by my own organizational skills.

Oh, get to administration.

I must be able to put all these different things and prioritize and get it all right and do it all in one day and just move on forward.

And what that ends up being is just a bunch of exhaustion.

And I end up at the end of the day going, my to-do list was so simple, and now I got a bunch of cosine, tangent, and x and y axes that I need a TI 83 for.

Nothing worked out like I wanted it.

Because I had no focus on what was important.

And I had no means by my own effort to attain whatever goal was before me.

Instead, relying upon the Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, which, when we say the power of the Holy Spirit, we think, whoa, tongues and miracles and woo, prophecy.

And yeah, that's true.

That all happens.

But the power of the Holy Spirit, we're going to talk about today, lives inside of each believer.

So as we look at that today, what's your overarching goal and how are you going to attain it?

That's kind of the grand question that Paul answers right here in Galatians chapter three.

Now, uh, we do pick up right in the middle of a book of Galatians, and that can be kind of awkward at times.

And so you kind of pick up on chapter three and you kind of ask yourself, what happened in chapters one and two?

Let me just summarize just for a bit here.

Uh, Paul has gone to Galatia, which is in modern-day Turkey, and he has planted a church.

And the book of Acts tells us that he and Barnabas stayed there for a long time.

And as they did that, they spoke and preached the word boldly.

Now, that word boldly should kind of catch our attention to realize something else is going on in the culture of Galatia.

And that something else were these false teachers that were coming along, coming right behind Paul and Barnabas and saying, hey, Paul's gospel is good.

It is right, it is true.

Jesus did die on the cross for you.

You want to become more like Jesus, right?

Well, yeah, of course.

Okay, well, you've got to become circumcised.

Because Jesus was a Jew.

And if you want to become more like Jesus, then you have to adhere to all of the Jewish laws, or at least the one, the main one.

At least that's the one that they were saying.

And so they got their equations all wrong.

Orthodox equation or right belief equations looks like this.

Jesus, all that Jesus has done, all that he'll continue to do, Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

That's a good uh good equation for us to remember today.

Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

And the Galatian false teachers were coming in and saying, Jesus plus something.

Well, that equals true Christianity.

But in reality, Jesus plus anything equals nothing.

You've gotten nothing if you add anything to the simple gospel of Jesus Christ, which we're going to unpack today.

So that is certainly the context by which Galatians is written.

And so we kind of pick up in the middle of that.

And Paul has been working hard to tell people, hey, you've been justified by faith, you've been set right by God because of faith, because of belief.

Nothing you did, nothing you'll do will earn his attention and his affection.

And so, if I could, I just want to read the middle of chapter two, verse 16, so we have that good understanding of what Paul is saying about being right with God and how do we get there.

And then let's move down to chapter three, and we'll read one to six.

So let's read that together.

Chapter two, verse sixteen, and then we'll go down to three.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law.

Because by works of the law, no one will be justified.

And what he's saying there is that, hey, the old Jewish law, it's not going to bring you into a right relationship with God.

That was never meant to do that.

It was to be an exercise of your faith.

That's what that was supposed to be for.

No one is going to be made into a right relationship with God by something they have done.

Unbelievable news for all of us who believe in the Son of God.

So we go down to chapter 3.

O foolish Galatians.

Wow, his tone changed in a hurry.

O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?

It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed and crucified.

Let me ask you only this.

Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Are you so foolish?

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain?

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

The good news today is Paul makes for us just one point.

Who knew?

You thought you were going to get three today.

Just the one point is all that Paul wants to make for us, and all that the text is going to make for us today.

But he does follow up with three questions that we'll also look at.

So one point and three questions.

Just when you thought you were getting off easy, one point and three questions.

Let's dig in.

Truly to God's word.

We will be reading some quite a bit actually from Romans as well.

So let's dig in.

The first point, the only point that he really makes is this: that forgetting the cross is foolish.

Forgetting the cross, the power behind the cross, the message of the cross, he who died on the cross, the work of the cross, forgetting the sufficiency of the cross is foolish.

Now that sounds like that just kind of fell right there when I said that, and it didn't get to the first or second row.

And perhaps it's because we get bored with the simplicity of what God is calling us towards.

We get bored with the simplicity of the cross, that yeah, yeah, Jesus died for me.

I get it, I get it, I get it.

Oh man, we can't get past that.

If we ever get over that, we're in trouble.

We find ourselves on the bad side of Galatians 3, where he says, Are you foolish?

Have you been bewitched?

And instead, God's calling us to a deeper and fuller understanding, to be reminded of the power that's found in the cross.

The Judaizers, the false teachers in Galatia were saying, Well, Jesus, yes, the cross, that's good, but you also have to do circumcision.

And that equals true Christianity.

That may not be our message today.

That may not be what we hear.

We're not going around and checking things that they were checking.

We're not going around and going, my to-do list is this, this, and this, and yours is not, and you need to make yours mine.

That's basically what they were doing.

We're not doing that here today.

Instead, we hear things that are much more subversive.

I don't know how they checked if you were circumcised or not in the first century.

I don't know.

That's a mystery to me.

That's a weird thing that's in the Bible.

That apparently they were, I mean, you're not circumcised.

I have no idea how they figured that out.

Okay, I don't want to know.

But that was pretty obvious, I would think.

Here in Galatians, it's pretty obvious, and yet today in our own culture, it's really subversive and mysterious and and and slips in.

It's here, right now in this room.

This false teaching that we hear on a regular basis, so has it been in our ears and in our minds and our hearts that we may have just lost sight of what's truly important.

Instead of circumcision, they're saying, well, today, if you do enough of A mixed in with a little B, then C will surely happen.

That's a formula that if you do this and you do that, then God will do this.

That's one area of false teaching.

Another one would be, hey, you can do whatever you want as long as you work hard enough.

God will surely bless you as long as you keep working.

Okay, that's that's another one.

Or my third one is uh if you don't do X, if you don't give, then God's not going to do Y.

You won't receive.

Or my favorite and probably the most popular, whether we like it or not, is uh if you just think positively, then God or the universe, depending on who you're listening to in the day, then God or the universe will return that towards you.

Holy monkey.

Wow.

Is that the nonsense that people are believing today?

If you think positively enough on a consistent basis, erase those negative haters that are around you, and God will return to you, because he's generous, tenfold.

Usually is the number.

These are the things that we hear.

They certainly may not have heard these things, but these are the things that we hear loud and clear.

And if we believe these things, if we forget the simplicity and the goodness of the cross, Paul is saying to us, just like he said to them, you're foolish.

You have you've had a spell cast on you.

Let me unpack foolishness and bewitched, because I think uh they're great words that aren't in the Bible all that often.

Uh and so the first one is this foolishness is a Greek word, anateos.

Anateos, my Greek professor would uh take a baseball bat to my knee right now.

Anateos.

He says this, and this is what anateos means.

A person who is unwilling to use his mind to understand or discern moral or spiritual truth.

A person who is unwilling, they're not, it's not that they're dumb or they're idiots or they they suffer from some mental illness.

They are unwilling, they are stubborn.

A person who is unwilling to use his mind to understand or discern moral or spiritual truth.

That kind of living, of easy living, of just listening and never going back and checking what you hear according to scripture.

That kind of living leads to foolishness.

And if we read the whole council of scripture, we would go back to the book of Psalms, uh, Psalm 14, verse 1, where David says, the fool says in his heart that there is no God.

Psalms 14:1

What Paul is saying to the Galatians, hey, you guys are acting like non-believers.

What happened?

You you you you believed, you, you submitted to the truth, and now you've forgotten what's been so simple.

What happened?

Surely someone cast a spell on you.

That word bewitch.

I like the word bewitch.

It reminds me of Pride and Prejudice, which is kind of weird.

I think I need to quit watching uh so many movies with my wife or something.

But I do, uh it's just weird.

Bewitch.

But this word bewitch, bascaino, bascaino.

No wonder it's bewitched.

Baskaino.

To exert an evil influence over someone through the eye.

Literally, the word that you should get from that is to hypnotize.

That the Galatians were hypnotized or had an evil influence over them through their eye.

Now there's a play on words here that we we miss because it's bewitch, and then there's this play on words at the end of verse 1.

He says, It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

He says, Your eyes have been deceived.

Your eyes do deceive you.

The simplicity of the cross is now all now all blurry and out of focus.

But Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified before you.

And what is he saying there?

He's saying, Well, these Galatian believers, they probably weren't at the crucifixion scene in all likelihood.

Instead, what the scripture is saying here, and what Paul is saying to his Galatian believers is, I came to you, I stay with you for a long time.

I preach the word boldly to you, clearly.

I I explained the gospel to you in such simple terms that it was like somebody just put a poster of Jesus in front of you.

And it was so easy for you to believe because it was so simple and it had all come into focus for you, and now you were believing.

What happened?

Do you remember those days for you?

Remember those first few days or months, or maybe even years when you were a believer?

First believer.

And everything was so simple and easy, and no one could talk you down of evangelizing to somebody if they tried.

No one could talk you down into calling people out for sin if they tried.

And some of that was overzealousness and self-righteousness, and some of it was just you being on fire for the Lord.

And it was simple and it was easy.

And you got around people, and you shared the gospel, and people were like, I don't really want to hang out with you anymore.

And you were like, Okay, that's great.

I got Jesus, that's all I need.

And now, years later, you get into the gospel and you go, you know what, man, that was exhausting.

I lost some friends.

I did X, Y, and Z.

I just want to fly below the radar.

It's no longer all that, it's important, but not gonna be the driving force in my life.

It's a tack on.

Yeah, I'm a believer.

Sure.

It's a tack on to what is more has become more important.

And Paul is saying, hey, what happened, guys?

What happened, ladies?

Has there been a spell that's been cast over you?

You've been deceived for what was so simple and so true.

You see, what he's trying to get them to realize is this the importance of justification.

The importance of justification.

That word justification.

That's a church word, that's a word that we shouldn't run from, but it is a word that we should embrace as Christian believers.

It is foundational to what you and I believe.

And it just means this to me to be made right with God.

To be made right with God.

And I would even add on to that, to be made right with God by God.

Let me show you what I mean out of the book of Romans.

Uh turn with me to the left, to the book of Romans, chapter five.

And keep your finger in Romans when we turn back to Galatians.

We'll be back there shortly.

But this is probably one of the clearest pictures of justification in Scripture.

Uh, and the reality is that believers have been forgetting the importance of justification for a long time.

And that's perhaps why it's all throughout the Bible.

From Genesis all the way to Rev.

In some way or another, throughout the whole council of Scripture, is this whole idea of, hey, you've been set right with God.

You've been made right with God by faith, not by something that you did.

It's not by your works.

Ephesians says, it's by grace you've been saved, not of your works, so that you no one can boast.

That's another way of explaining it.

But Romans 5 gives us a really good example of what justification, being made right with God by God, says.

I want to read chapter 5, 1 and 2, and then I'll skip down to verse 6.

It says, Therefore, since we have been justified, therefore, since we have been made right with God by faith.

Hmm.

By belief.

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Move down to verse six with me.

For while while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die.

But God shows his love for us in this in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

There's a few words I want to point out to you, especially right here in Romans chapter 5, and it's this.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Just notice your state.

Notice who you are in this passage, who I am in this passage.

He says that we've been justified through faith, certainly.

We've obtained access by faith into this grace.

We keep going down in verse 6.

Number one, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

You were ungodly.

I was ungodly.

We keep going down in verse 8, but while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

I was a sinner.

You were a sinner.

Verse 10, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son.

Three major words there that kind of describe, that fully describe our inability to do anything for God to get his attention.

We wouldn't want to if we could.

Apart from God's grace and his work and his spirit in our life.

Why?

Because we were sinners, we were ungodly, we were his enemies.

And so God has got to fix all of that.

We're stuck in a problem that we have no solution for.

We're stuck in a situation we're ungodly, we're sinners, we're enemies of God, and because all that is true, like I said before, we wouldn't want to get to God.

Even if we could, we wouldn't want to.

In fact, Dallas Willard describes it like this: he says that Christian transformation, spiritual Christian transformation, the renovation of the human heart, is an inescapable human problem with no human solution.

That's from his book, Renovation of the Heart.

Spiritual transformation, whether that be from death to life, when you become a believer, when you become justified, made right by God, with God, that's a human problem.

It's not a God problem.

He's got perfect fellowship within himself.

He doesn't need you.

It's a human problem, an inescapable human problem.

And there's nothing you can do to fix it.

So when we go back to Galatians 3, verse 1, he says, hey, don't forget the fact that God didn't have to save you.

Galatians 3:1

He didn't have to.

He chose to, and he wanted to.

Over and over again, we would see that message in the scriptures that God in the flesh, Jesus, upon his own free will, laid down his life for you and I that would believe.

Why?

Because he saw a problem that we had, not that he had, and he solved it.

He came to earth and he died.

And he reconciled sinners, enemies, and ungodly with a holy and righteous and good God.

That's the simplicity of the gospel right there.

The simplicity of justification by faith.

And Paul says, Have you forgotten that?

Have you forgotten how simple and how powerful that truly is?

That's our main and our only point today.

Because the reality is he continues on in verse 2.

And the spirit in which he continues on will be this was so simple, and yet somehow you've forgotten.

And he asks three rhetorical questions.

Why does he ask questions instead of statements?

Because he's a lawyer, and that's what lawyers do.

They know the answer and they ask the question anyway.

That's exactly what Paul is doing in two through five.

And so he's got three rhetorical questions as we continue to move on through this text.

The first one is this, found in chapter two.

It'll come up on your screen.

And it says this Is God's Spirit earned or received?

It's really that simple.

Let me show you what I mean in two, and then in five, he says, Let me ask you only this.

Did you receive the spirit of uh did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

And again in five, does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Something that you have done that God has responded to and now given himself to you?

Or is it something that he has done and in congruence with who he is, this generous, giving, and good God, that he would just continue to give himself to you?

Which one is it?

Is God's Spirit earned or received?

And I think we all have the answer to that, most likely in our head, but just in case we don't, one of the last things that Jesus said on earth in Acts 1, verse 8, he said this, it it but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

Acts 1:8

It's a passive word.

You will receive something.

There's nothing you're gonna do to get it.

Not only have you been justified by faith, but now you've received this Holy Spirit by faith.

By grace, a simple act of grace by God for you and for me.

And instead of thinking that we have somehow got God's attention by waving our arms and being a good enough person, the simple faith that God's calling us all to just says, hey, just believe, just trust.

This lawyer-like question that he asked, hey, let me just ask you this one thing.

Did you receive the Spirit by works or by faith?

The Spirit came.

God came and lives inside of you and inside of me because of faith.

Oftentimes we get it, we get it backwards.

We think that if we do enough good things, then God will show up.

If we do enough of A, then B will happen.

If we pray enough, then surely God will answer these prayers because we're just gonna keep on beating down the door.

We're gonna keep on doing X, Y, or Z.

And if we don't, if we're not careful, we'll start to use these scriptural promises and twist them and turn it.

The ask, seek, knock model of prayer.

We're gonna start twisting and turning that and going, but whatever, it's whatever I want.

It's whatever I want.

And we turn it and we twist it for our own benefit and our own good.

That's a works-based model that we're trying to receive more of the Spirit.

And instead, the Spirit has come in his fullness and lives inside of you and inside of me.

If we depend on anything, praying, giving, teaching, going to India, going to Oklahoma City, coming to church, being a good person, whatever that means, uh, speaking in tongues.

Because when you talk about the Spirit, you've got probably thinking about speaking in tongues or having a second baptism experience.

That, oh, you became a believer, that's good.

Wait until you get the Holy Spirit.

I remember I worked for a mortgage company and I used to talk to a broker for almost every day, and we would talk and talk and talk, and we'd talk about loans, we also talk about our Christian faith.

He goes, hey man, you think you've got it good now?

Wait till the Holy Spirit comes on you.

Um he's he's in me.

Matter of fact.

I'm we're good.

He's like, No, you don't understand.

It will blow your mind.

It's so other level.

It's so other level, it you'll never be the same.

And I just got hot and angry at him over the phone.

Because what he what I felt like is he was saying, hey, I'm on varsity and you're on JV.

Come on up to varsity.

And I just thought, I don't, our friendship is just about over.

Like I'm on varsity.

I'm not the captain, but I'm I'm we're good.

Like we're alright.

And that kind of an attitude is what's so divisive when we're starting when we talk about the Holy Spirit, because the reality is this second baptism experience, anything instead of the cross of Christ, if we depend on anything, being a good person, whatever, in order to gain something, to earn something from God, uh, we are on the bad part of Galatians 3.

We've become foolish, we've become bewitched.

And not only and more than that, we've become idolaters, which is probably the scariest and worst word you can use in church.

So I'll move on.

That's our first question.

Is God's spirit, is it earned or is it received?

So many times do we have it backwards.

We think that if we do enough stuff, we'll get more faith.

If we become obedient, God will bless us with more of his presence.

When the reality is, his presence should push us into loving him.

That's what Jesus says right before he unpacks the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in John 14, uh, 16 and 14, 15, he says, Hey, if you love me, you'll do what I obey.

My relationship with you should produce good works.

My presence in you should produce your obedience in me.

Not my obedience will now produce your love for me, God.

Not at all.

Totally backwards, backwards from the way we have it.

The second question is found in verse 3.

Not just as God's spirit uh earned or received, surely it's received.

That's what Jesus said.

That's what you and I have all experienced if we are believers, whether we feel it or not, that's what's there.

And he he, the third person of the Trinity is in us.

And then the second question that Paul asks right here in verse 3, are you so foolish?

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

I love the way that the NIV puts that.

Are you so foolish?

Are you now trying to attain your goals by human effort?

Remember that goal question I asked the very first?

What's your main overarching goal of your life?

To become more like Jesus.

Are you now trying to do that by human effort?

After being a believer for however long you've been?

At first it was easy to depend on the Spirit, but years later you found that managing life has become more and more difficult.

And so this second question that comes up on the screen behind me and burns into our eyes is on whom are you depending to become holy?

Is it you?

Is it yourself?

Is it your good works?

Or is it the Holy Spirit?

When I was in seminary, the first couple of years I was there, maybe two or three years, uh, I probably want to minimize it.

It's probably more than that if you ask my wife.

Uh but the reality is, uh, I I thought I thought I had progressed in the spiritual life beyond a quiet time.

Have you heard of this idea of a quiet time?

Yes, it's been used for legalistic purposes, uh, to be sure.

Uh, in fact, right here in verse 3, we have one of the greatest uh definitions of legalism in the entire Bible.

Trying to do good things, holy things, with unholy motivation.

That's a great understanding of legalism.

Doing great things, good things, holy things with an unholy motivation.

You could also say you're doing something so that you can measure yourself against someone else.

And you may not understand that you're doing that while it's happening, but truly that's the reality of Galatians 3, 3.

When I was in seminary, I was, uh I had gotten to the point where I had just apparently progressed beyond a quiet time.

Uh the whole idea of a quiet time that you've got to start your day with the Lord, or else, you know, your whole day is gonna be terrible.

That's A plus B equals C, by the way.

The heart behind the quiet time is not because your day will be great, but because you get to know and love and fall in love with the God of the universe.

Amen.

You sit in his presence.

Will that result in a good day?

Maybe.

Could be.

It'll make things a whole lot more bearable.

And so I had come to the point in my seminary degree, seminary career, I should say, I was there for long enough, uh, that I'd I'd I'd progressed beyond that.

And I didn't need a quiet time anymore.

And I remember sitting in uh in a Sunday school, uh, much like I teach every week, and I remember being there, and the leaders were there, and they were great people, good, godly people.

I remember one of the ladies said, Hey, what's your quiet time look like?

And I thought to myself, oh no, we're in trouble.

We are in trouble because I know that woman, I know how she does her quiet time, and it's gonna heap all kinds of condemnation over on her.

And so the leader answered, she said, Well, my quiet time looks like this.

I wake up at five in the morning, I pray for two hours, and then I read the Bible for about an hour.

I was like, I'm not sure Jesus did that, but you okay, that's like, wow, two hours in prayer, I'll be happy if I do four minutes.

Uh, and my arithmetic is surely off there, but I'll be happy if I get four minutes in, much less two hours, and you're gonna read the Bible for an hour after that.

Woo! Man, I need a nap after your quiet time.

But I just looked at this whole situation and I felt like, uh oh, this girl who doesn't know what a quiet time looks like is now thinking three hours of each day.

And I couldn't contain myself, just jumping out of my seat like on the edge, going, oh, I gotta talk, I gotta talk, I gotta talk.

And my friend in the class goes, hey man, just talk.

We don't raise our hands in here.

I was like, all right, well, I'm new to this class.

Let me tell you what I think about this.

I think that you're heaping condemnation on her, and she'll never attain to that goal.

And and and and and here's the reality: Jesus never says do a quiet time.

Paul never says do a quiet time.

By the way, those are true statements.

But he does say, hey, be still and know that I'm the Lord.

Come away with me, find rest.

Jesus often withdrew to lonely places in the morning.

Man, how I'd miss that.

In seminary, which by the way, they call cemetery if you don't know that.

The reason for that is because all these holy and good and righteous things like reading the Bible and going to chapel and discovering new truths about God and studying theology, all these things just become, yep, did that, did that, did that.

What else do I have to do for tomorrow?

Good, oh, I gotta pray some, I gotta have like a journal for that.

Done.

Got it, we get it.

It becomes this to-do list of nothingness because there's no God in any of it.

And that's exactly what I experienced.

Somebody told me when I was going into seminary, hey, just beware that it can become a cemetery.

I wasn't there for five minutes.

It was a cemetery, it was dead.

Just doing things because I'm a I'm a goal-oriented person, I'm a taskmaster.

Just asked my wife uh about that one.

Uh, but truly, that's who I am.

I'm a task-oriented person, and so that to me was oh, I can do that, I can succeed here, I can do that, I can do that.

Thinking I was gaining something, but losing the most credible and incredible reality in my life, and that was the presence of God.

Why?

Because I'd become foolish, I'd become dependent upon myself, upon a syllabus, upon what my professor should do, should told told me to do for my holiness.

Instead of it being this romantic dance with this God who purchased me, it was all right, what I gotta do today?

What's my calendar look like?

Let's get it done.

There's a huge difference in those two things.

But the reality is behind all this is that legalism, it is an attractive trap.

It appeals to us on so many levels.

First, it it makes things manageable.

It allows us to have some manageable handrails to life.

That's what legalism does.

It's like a to-do list, just like I explained.

It also allows us to compare ourselves to others because that day when I spoke up in class, I was comparing myself to them, saying, you don't need a quiet time, you're good.

You've progressed beyond all that.

That's where maturity is.

You need to just go on beyond it.

And I was exalting what my spiritual life was, which was not much to brag about, and making it someone else's reality.

How foolish the message says.

Are you going to continue in on this craziness right there on verse 3?

The third question that he talks about is in verse 4, and he says, This did you suffer so many things in vain?

If indeed it was in vain?

The Greek word there for suffer could also mean experience.

And so there's kind of two ways to see this.

Did you suffer so many things in vain?

If indeed it was in vain, the third question he's asking them and all of us is that is all that you've experienced worthless?

Is all that you have experienced in your spiritual life, is are you just counting it all as null and void?

Because if it's suffer, then it would be something like this.

It'd be like someone like Beek.

Because you and I don't suffer for the gospel.

We may think we do when we go back home and our parents don't understand that we're Christians, or our family don't understand that we're we don't suffer for the gospel here.

We go over to India and we get to a guy like Beek and all the Christians that are over there, and uh and this question would be posed of them is all that you've experienced, is all that you've suffered worthless?

Have you given up all the things that you've given up?

Have you lost all that you've lost for nothing?

And the implication there is if you are depending upon yourself for holiness, then you're counting that all as worthless.

And the second way to read this is not just suffer, but just experience.

Have all of your experiences with the Lord, where he spoke to you, where he tenderly pushed and prodded or corrected you, is all that you've experienced with him.

Are you going to now count that as worthless?

And the implication there is you're counting it worthless if you depend on yourself to become more like Jesus.

Those times in seminary or cemetery for me, man, they were worthless.

I was counting all that worthless.

There was no value in what God had done for me or the fact that God was living in me.

Christianity had become one, two, three, A, B, C.

And instead, it's presence.

It's the power and presence of God inside of you and me.

Sometimes we get to the point in life where we just keep walking with the Lord no matter what for sure, but we get about four or five years into our walk or 40 years into our walk and we go, you know what, Jesus, you've done enough for me.

I'll take it from here.

Doesn't that sound?

It almost sounds good.

Like I'm gonna do Jesus a favor by relieving the load that he has to bear in me.

I got it, Jesus.

We're good.

And we put him aside and we start to try and manage life.

I was talking with somebody recently about their life, and he's trying to manage his marriage, and he's trying to manage uh his job, which he's you know, maybe losing soon, and he's trying to manage his kids who are off the reservation on how they live.

They're grown and they're just they're off.

They're not, they don't love the Lord, they don't love their parents, it's nothing.

And he's got all these three shells, and he's just trying to make sure they're all organized in the right way.

And every time he looks underneath one, he peeks underneath one, he's like, that ain't it, that ain't it, that ain't it, this isn't the right equation, this isn't the right problem, these aren't in the right order.

My priorities are messed up.

Wife, kids, job, all right, that didn't work.

Job, wife, kids, nope.

And all this time he's managing and trying to manage and shifting everything around.

Meantime, the gospel's over here.

God's presence is over here.

And he's over here managing, trying to figure out what's up and what's down, and what equation and what variables will make the right formula.

And the gospel is over here, not just the gospel that God died for us and resurrected, but the full gospel that the Holy Spirit now lives inside of us and makes all of that futile if we don't trust in Him for it all.

It's a shell game.

You can never win if we forget what's most important, that relying upon the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God inside of us.

If we don't do that, then we are gonna be managing life and be exhausted and find ourselves foolish, bewitched, accounting everything that God's done for us as worthless.

We run to the cross like a lumberjack trying to cut him off.

And instead, we need to go and bow with arms wide, arms open, hands, palms to the sky with thanksgiving.

The reason why I say that is because Paul finishes the scriptures uh right here, this this paragraph in verse 5 and 6.

And I just want to read it to you in the message.

The message says this, and uh if you read five and six, the message is just another translation of the Bible.

It's pretty loose, it's pretty interpretive, but it kind of helps us understand a little bit behind what someone like Paul would have been saying when he referred to someone like Abraham.

He says, answer this question.

Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves?

Does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving?

Or because you trust him to do them in you?

Don't these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham?

He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.

What an unbelievable statement.

If you could leave that up there for just a minute.

He refers to Abraham, a guy who literally worshipped the moon in a town called Ur.

And that's who he was.

He was God's enemy, he was godless, and he was a sinner.

And God revealed himself to him for no reason other than to make Abraham the man of faith.

And when God revealed himself to him, he says, Hey, I'm gonna do X, I'm gonna do Y, I'm gonna do Z.

It's gonna be amazing.

I know you're old, but I'm gonna give you so many descendants.

Look up at the sky.

See how many stars there are?

You won't be able to count them.

They're gonna be so many.

And Abraham goes, and God asked Abraham, You believe all this?

Abraham, the most natural response in him was, absolutely, I believe.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know if I'd have been as faithful as that man.

But the message tells us that that act of belief, that one act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.

That's the connection that we've got to see today in simple faith.

That one thing that God did for you, dying on the cross, should change how we live our life.

Whereas 1 John starts to tell us, it's no longer darkness, it's light.

To where Paul says in Ephesians, it's no longer death, it's life.

It's no longer foolish, it's wise.

And all of that comes full circle.

If we remember the cross and trust God, believe God, that he'll do these things in us by the presence of his spirit.

With that, would you guys hold out your hands like this?

Let me speak a word of blessing over you.

And just like you saw in the video, uh, expect something from God as we do that.

Your God has purchased you.

He saw you.

You can't hide, he's purchased you by the blood of his son, and now he's put his spirit in you.

Because all of that is true.

Live for him today and forevermore with the power that's found in the Holy Spirit.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.