Galatians | Near Death Experience

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Near death experiences can have a profound impact on a person.

One famous story from church history: John Newton, the author of Amazing Grace, pastor and great prolific writer John Newton, the blaspheming, carousing, troublemaking sailor that he was, nearly died in a storm while crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1748.

That happened.

In the middle of the storm, this great blasphemer cried out to God for mercy.

And it baffled him.

He had no idea where that came from.

And so his life went, figuring out where that came from and learning to follow Jesus.

But not many of us will live through great storms on troubled seas.

We just won't.

But nonetheless, death haunts all of our footsteps and some of the most mundane things.

I'll try to spare you unnecessary anxieties, but think for just a second about how fast your car goes down a country road, or how much electricity is at the end of your fingertips when you plug in your phone to charge it, or remember just how sharp a kitchen knife can be and how easy it is to slip and fall when you carry it across a room.

Raging seas are one thing.

Raging seas are one thing, but the scariest brushes with death, the scariest brushes with death, are the everyday ones we barely even notice.

Things are bad in the Galatian churches.

They were on the brink of death.

And they didn't even know it.

They didn't even know it.

And churches die in lots of ways too.

Some churches die on great stormy seas as attendance dries up or ages out or some great conflict splits the church in half until everybody leaves anyway.

Churches die in great calamitous ways, but sometimes churches die while the building is still standing, while people still gather there every week, maybe even hundreds of people gather there, but the church that used to be there died a long time ago.

And all that's left is just the shell of a social club.

And social clubs can even demonstrate great growth and great signs of vitality, all the while dancing on the bones of a dead church.

And like toddlers playing with knives in a swimming pool during a thunderstorm.

The churches in Galatia were facing three life-threatening issues at the same time when Paul wrote to them.

So let's look at the letter.

Here are my three points.

In theory, if I turn the switch on.

There we go.

Three things haunted the Galatian church.

First, another apostle.

Chapter 1 and verse 1.

Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia.

These are congregations that Paul knows well.

These are churches in places like Antioch or Iconium or Lystra and Derby.

For a variety of reasons, I think the letter comes not long after the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

Remember this story: some men came down from Judea, that is, to Antioch, and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

And after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

From there, the apostles, led by Peter and James, sent a letter back to Antioch about the matter of circumcision, saying, just don't worry about that, just refrain from idolatry and you will do well.

But Paul was there the whole time, in Galatia, battling with the circumcision party.

And after that letter came back, he remained there for a little while and left town.

And then after some amount of time, I'm not going to guess how long, word gets to Paul that things are not right in those Galatian churches again.

They've begun to turn to another gospel from some other churches.

Maybe they started to exchange the teaching of the other of the apostles for those other teachers, especially maybe the teaching of Paul.

And the first two chapters we have here are largely just Paul's argument that he's not just some other teacher.

In verse 1, he says he's sent by God, an apostle, a sent one by God and not men.

In verse 11, he'd have them know it the gospel preached by him is not man's gospel, but it came as a revelation of God and Jesus Christ.

In chapter 2, verse 9, he said James and Cephas, who's Peter and John, all agree with him and confirm this gospel.

And besides all that, when Paul was back at Antioch, they all heard him correct Peter, who is Cephas, there at verse 11, about these very issues that we'll get to in a second.

We're left to believe Peter back down, confirming before their very eyes the apostolic truth of God's gospel.

That gospel in verse 6 that they'd begun to turn away from.

He says you've deserted, you've betrayed, you've turned your back upon God.

The one who called you.

This is huge, you guys.

This is huge because we we can't make the mistake.

But the Galatians seem to, we can't make the mistake of seeming to think that the New Testament, that the gospel, was just an idea, a theory that some men came up with, that maybe it's just a new and novel way of interpreting the Old Testament.

Paul's saying very clearly that the apostles are not a new school of rabbinical teaching, that is prone to making more proselytes than Judaism of old.

He's not saying anything like that.

He's saying and he's arguing very loudly that the gospel comes not as man's invention, but as God's proclamation through his chosen messengers.

Those people that God sent out with the message.

That's all the word apostle means, right?

They're apostles because they were chosen to be apostles.

By the revelation of God, Jesus walked up to Peter and said, Enough fishing, let's go, you're with me.

It's not an invitation, it was a divine command that Peter obeyed.

And the Lord appeared to Paul in the Damascus road.

Paul recounts it with these words, he said, For I did not receive the gospel from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

So this whole thing in these first two chapters, Paul is grounding his teaching authority in the authority of the God who sent him.

It's a big deal.

Because as we'll see, embracing another apostle leads to embracing another gospel.

But before we move on to the other gospels, you have to notice that Paul doesn't start there.

So I'm not starting there.

Paul starts in verse 1 with his apostleship.

He starts with the apostolic messenger, because that's its own life-threatening issue.

Beginning to question the authority of the apostles is dangerous.

Because without the apostles, there's no church.

And churches die like that.

That little word revelation on the screen, that one little word, revelation, I've highlighted it for you.

It's it's it's my whole point.

It's Paul's whole point.

Paul is saying that the apostles, himself included, have received the word of God by revelation and therefore can speak with the same authority as the prophets who could preach, thus saith the Lord.

He's telling these churches, I didn't make this up.

God told me, God, not Peter, not James, God.

And if you remember, throughout the Old Testament, when the Word of God dried up, the people wandered.

And often when the Word of God dried up, it was because the people had already stopped listening to it.

And so then, if we follow Paul's logic, to turn from Paul is to turn from the word of God.

Churches die like that.

And so we gotta ask, faith, evangelical free church.

We have to ask, how do we keep a grip on the teaching of the apostles?

How do we not lose this link?

How do we hold fast to this connection?

Some churches argue for this chain of succession, that the apostles passed on their office to men or to women, even.

The classic example of this is the Roman church.

That they claim that the Pope sits in Peter's seat and therefore with the apostles' authority.

But it's not just Rome.

It's not just Rome who says things like this.

In the 1850s, a bunch of Baptists in Tennessee reacted so strongly to the progressivism of their day, and it was bad, that in order to win the argument that they were right and the liberals were wrong, they started to say that they had this unbroken trail of blood all the way back to the apostles.

They're called the landmarkists.

They had this chart, I got it for you, I doubt you can make any sense of it, but they had this chart, very complicated chart, 20 columns for 20 centuries in 1850.

These were forward-thinking gentlemen, and they used this to argue that everybody should listen to them because they were the only real church, they said.

They said, we have an unbroken succession all the way back to when Jesus organized his church.

That's there on the far left-hand side.

Scripture, of course, agreed with them, and they would use scripture to make their arguments, but for some reason they thought that scripture wasn't enough.

Is that really how it works?

No.

No, it's not.

I think, brothers and sisters, there's a case to be made, even right here, just in Galatians, against apostolic succession, in favor of the apostolic proclamation, that it was the message the apostles passed on, not their office.

Paul says as much when he writes, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.

The authority of the apostles lies not in the apostles themselves, but in the message and its sender, the gospel.

And the apostles' teaching of it, Paul says, comes from God.

And that's what matters.

So where are the apostles now?

They're not in Rome.

They're not in Minneapolis at the Free Church Head Office.

They're right here.

Right?

They're right here.

One more wink at this.

Paul addresses his letter not to the bishop of the Galatian churches, nor the governing body of Galatian leaders, but to the churches themselves.

So I think that the church is the next stage in God's economy after the apostles.

Not the pastors, not the elders, not the bishops, not the popes, but the church.

Churches who have elders, who exercise oversight as pastoral shepherds, of course, but bishops don't have churches.

The word of God is given to the church by the apostles, because that's where the apostolic authority lies.

That's where the apostles are today.

Their authority lies where it always did, in the word of the Lord.

And so, friends, the application for us with free churches everywhere is we have to ask, we have to say, as we always have, where stands it written.

That means the only authority Faith Evangelical Free Church will recognize is the authority of God contained in these scriptures.

And if anybody comes teaching anything else in this pulpit or those pews, don't listen.

Don't listen.

Even for one moment.

But not only that, friends, we also have to keep a careful watch on ourselves.

Lest we begin to trust our own wisdom instead of the word of the only wise God.

So preach the scriptures, teach the scriptures, sing the scriptures, pray the scriptures, encourage one another with the scriptures.

Brother Elders, lead from the scriptures.

If we pick up and we run off with worldly philosophies or intermingled Christian-ish stuff, like I got a whole list.

Do you want it?

Aristotle, Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Tillich, Boltz Weber, Jordan Peterson, or even somebody like Joseph Smith or Mary Bakey Edder or Ellen White, any of that stuff.

The names don't matter.

It's that they've left Scripture that matters, right?

Start letting that kind of teaching challenge the authority of Scripture and hold them on the same footing.

And you're playing with fire.

Because turning from God's revelation through the apostles to any other apostle is like lighting matches at Generous Jerry's.

That's a fireworks store if you didn't know.

Right?

That's the first near-death experience in Galatians, right?

From chapter 1, verse 1.

Paul warned them about turning to another apostle.

The second near-death experience follows right after it.

They were turning to another gospel.

Look a little further past verse 1 to verse 6.

I've got it for you on the screen.

St.

Paul says, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.

Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

And bam, just like that.

Just like that, Paul's in.

If you look at your Bibles to see he's barely finished his pleasantries.

He's just wham and it's blowing his mind.

It's a total surprise, and it's somewhat unthinkable to Paul that the churches in Galatia would desert and turn their backs on God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for their sins in verse 4 to deliver them from the present evil age according to the will of God and Father.

He's barely said, hello, how are you?

How's your work?

How are your kids?

Are you doing well?

He's barely done any of that.

He just brushed past that stuff.

This is like somebody storming into your house and laying into you with almost no warning.

I found an example of a common letter that a classic scholar told me was pretty normal and a good comparison for how Paul usually talks.

It says, Amonis to her sweetest father, greeting, when I received your letter and recognized that by the will of the gods, pagans, you were preserved, I rejoiced greatly.

Seller greets you and all who are with me, with him.

I pray for your health.

That's the letter.

It's so kind, it's so cordial.

And there's very little of that here in Paul's letter to the Galatians, right?

There's almost none of it.

It's like Paul knocks on the door.

Who is it?

And Paul says, Yeah, it's me, Paul.

Can we talk?

You open the door, and there's this red-faced little man with his finger in your chest saying, I can't believe you.

What?

I really do think that's close to the forcefulness of this.

I don't think I'm overplaying it, but now imagine you're the guy at the door getting rebuke, and what are you talking about?

Well, then the guy says, You know what you did.

Just still, what?

And then Paul says, You've betrayed Jesus.

Could you imagine the churches in Galatia getting this letter?

Guys, these are churches that Paul knows well and they know Paul well.

And sometime after he left Antioch, he got some kind of news that just set him off.

And he sent this letter back behind him.

And we have to try to figure out what the news is if we're going to understand what he means by turning to a different gospel.

As the letter keeps going, the truth comes out that there are two observable behaviors going on.

People in the Galatian churches were toying with two things.

Maybe circumcision is all over the letter.

It's clearest in chapter 5, verse 2.

And right there in chapter 5, verse 2, it might give us some hope that nobody had actually accepted circumcision yet.

So maybe they were just listening to those teachers from Judea again.

Maybe they were considering it, but they hadn't done it yet.

Maybe they were, I think it's more likely they were arguing about it.

They were arguing about what they should do still, even after the letter came back from Jerusalem.

And then also in chapter 4, Paul says they're observing days, months, seasons, and years.

Think of things like the Sabbath or the Passover or the feast of booths.

So what's the real issue here?

Both of these things, of course, are marks of the Jewish faith, still bound under the law of Moses, but Paul himself has taught in other letters about special days and even food offered to idols, no less, that one person esteems one day better than another, while another esteems all days alike.

Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

The one who observes it the day observes it in honor of the Lord, and the one who eats eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God.

While the one who abstains abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God, for none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.

He seems to say there's freedom on these things.

So it's not that observing the Sabbath is something that will cut you off from Christ.

He's not saying that.

And even here in Galatians chapter 5, verse 6, he says, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything.

Galatians 5:6

But only faith working through love.

So it really doesn't count either way.

So then what's the big deal, Paul?

What's the big deal?

Chapter 5, verse 4 nails it with one little word.

Justified.

You who would be justified by the law, by things like circumcision or the Sabbath.

You who would be justified, or rather declared righteous by the law.

Righteousness in the scriptures, righteousness is a big deal.

To be judged righteous, to be esteemed a righteous person, to be called righteous.

That's the whole of the Christian hope, friends.

Everything hangs on that.

Remember, Paul tells the Corinthians, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

How about Romans 2?

But for those who are self-seeking and don't obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

For those called unrighteous by God, there will be wrath and fury.

How do any of us suppose that we will escape from the judgment of God?

So this is the issue still.

Just like in Acts 15, how can we be saved from God's wrath?

How, in what way does a person standing before a holy and righteous God, a God of inconceivable greatness and perfection, who demands utmost obedience from his created image bearers, a God who cannot tolerate evil, a God who destroys nations in his wrath and strikes down blasphemers where they stand?

How can any of us stand before that God with any hope that he will declare us righteous?

It's impossible.

Right?

But of course, the the answer sings off the pages of Galatians, does it not?

You look back at chapter 2, verse 15 and 16.

He's still recounting his speech to Peter, I think.

Ignore the paragraph break in the ESV.

Paul says, We ourselves, Peter, are Jews by birth and not Gentiles.

Sinners.

Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, just like in chapter 5, 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.

We have to keep going.

If in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?

In other words, these are my words, if when we look to Jesus to be justified, we have to admit that we've sinned against the law.

Is Jesus then a servant of sin when he declared sinners righteous?

This thing is so ingrained in many of us it's hard for us to fathom the argument Paul's trying to defeat.

But the argument Paul is countering would sound something like Gentiles can't be saved because they're sinners.

They had to first become righteous Jews through circumcision.

Otherwise, if Jesus justified them, he would be a servant of sin.

That's the kind of argument Paul's trying to defeat.

And you feel where this is going, right?

Paul's essentially asking Peter, does Jesus only save righteous people?

No.

No.

Verse 17, certainly not.

For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor.

For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.

I have been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith.

And the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

I don't nullify the grace of God.

This is it.

This is the punchline.

Drop the mic.

For if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

If the law could save you, then why did Jesus die?

That's the problem.

That's the problem.

And going back to chapter 5, Paul gets to the heart of it.

He says that returning for the law for justification, saying that we must be circumcised to be saved, or we have to keep the Sabbath to be saved, or the only way to be righteous is to believe in Jesus and blank, fill it in.

Saying anything like that is turning your back on Jesus.

It's saying the cross wasn't enough.

Believing stuff like that, preaching stuff like that cuts you off from Christ.

You are severed from Christ.

And he will be of no advantage to you.

It's a different gospel.

It's another gospel.

It's a great way to kill a church.

Because a church that believes or teaches or lives as though what you do is what saves you is no church at all.

So, friends, enough.

Enough with trying to convince the world we're going to heaven because we've got it all together.

There are people out there who want you to believe that they have the keys to a happy home, to quiet and obedient kids, a successful career where your faith comes first.

They say, listen, guys, if you just roll out our selected seven biblical principles, it'll all come together for you, and then you'll really be a Christian.

Or they say, this is what it really means to be saved.

And then they point to something you do instead of something that Christ has done.

Right?

This is the Galatian problem.

They were tempted to take matters of righteousness into their own hands.

And we do the same thing when we speak or act in such a way as if we can control the outcomes of our faithfulness or our righteousness has some kind of effect.

Don't ever say, like Moses warned the Israelites, don't ever say that the strength of your own righteousness is what earns you anything.

This great relationship with God or a hope for eternity, or heaven forbid, any kind of earthly blessing or success, because guys, such spitting, such thinking spits on the cross of Christ when it places success and righteousness and positive outcomes and eternity even in your hands instead of in the nail-scarred hands of Jesus Christ.

Follow that road.

Go ahead, rededicate your life, consecrate yourself to be on fire.

Go to all the conferences, read all the books, watch all the sermons.

And you may, by God's grace or Satan's scheming, find a little relief from obvious sins.

You may find the methodology works a little bit when you discipline your kids or when people start coming to your church or your Bible study or your wisdom for advice, guys of the church, we might even start to call it a revival.

But it could all be fake.

It really could.

Because the heart is desperately sick and twisted beyond all comprehension.

The Faith Evangelical Free Church quadruples in size in the next two years.

It will not be because of our righteousness.

It won't be.

Because outside of Christ Jesus, guys, we're not righteous.

All that our righteousness can produce for us is the wrath of God.

Anything else, anything else, is a gift of grace.

It's a gift of grace.

I hope it's making sense, friends, because I think it's just so important that just a whisper of any kind of boastfulness, any kind of arrogant thinking like this is a denial of grace.

I hope it's making sense.

The obvious ones are easy to spot.

When somebody says, I'm going to heaven because I prayed a prayer, told my church camp counselor I believed in Jesus, and I've gone to church ever since.

We see that one.

Because that's not going to cut it at the judgment seat, guys.

It's not.

The slipperier ones are like, well, of course God is blessing our church.

We've brought in all these great pastors.

Or of course God is blessing our church.

We started preaching the right way.

All such preening.

It's just making a good show of the flesh.

And it's not much better than saying, we don't just believe in Jesus here.

We also keep the Sabbath.

Oh, be careful.

I say it a little bit differently.

If you do everything right, if we do everything right, we'll still need Jesus.

Amen.

Because righteousness can only come through faith in his name.

So let this be the motto at Faith Evangelical Free Church.

It's Paul's.

But far be it from us to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to us, and we to the world.

That's the gospel.

That's the gospel.

That Jesus died for the forgiveness of sins, and we, like Abraham, are partakers of his righteousness by faith and not by works, so that no one can boast.

And so whatever we do, we must constantly come back to this.

Our faith evangelical free church will die even if we succeed by worldly or churchy standards.

Remember that toddler playing with knives in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm?

Got the knives and the drowning threat down.

Let's look at the third.

Life-threatening issue and the Galatian near-death experience.

Keep in mind, keep in mind, Paul's audience is a primarily Gentile audience, a group of Gentile converts.

If they were mostly Jewish converts, then nobody would be that worried about circumcision.

Right?

It'd be a foregone conclusion.

But having already argued from the lives of Abraham and Moses that the law was a temporary guardian of Abraham's kids until the Messiah, Abraham's true offspring, would come.

Having already argued that, and it's a fascinating argument, especially if you're Jewish, essentially Paul argues that you don't need to go back through the law to get to the blessing promised to Abraham.

You don't have to.

You go through Jesus.

That's the whole middle of the book there.

But if you look at verse 23 of chapter 3, I think I have it on the screen for you.

Yeah.

Paul says, Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed.

When Paul says we, he means back from verse 1, himself and the brothers with him.

Maybe even Peter back from chapter 2.

But so through the law, he's saying, we, the Jewish people, were imprisoned.

They were held captive, even.

The verse before says the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe everything under sin, including Paul and the Jews.

And so stick with me, guys, I know it's a lot of verses at this part, but if we don't follow this argument, the fruit of the Spirit won't make sense.

And so, because of that, because everything is imprisoned, that's why Paul says in chapter 4, verse 3, still speaking of himself and his fellow Jews by birth, in the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

And so I hope you see that Paul is arguing that the law, with its circumcision and its feast days, was only ever a stopgap fix until Christ came.

Justification came to the people of the Old Testament, not because they kept the law, but because they believed the word of the God who gave the law and the promise that the law showed them.

And they demonstrated their belief in the promise with their faltering obedience to the law itself.

But the law was only ever just training wheels for the sons of Abraham until Christ, the foretold son of Abraham, the son of David, the prophet like Moses, until Christ came.

The law served this intermediate phase.

So then if you look back to chapter 4, verse 1, I believe, Paul starts to, verse 8, forgive me.

Paul starts to apply this to the Gentiles.

He starts to turn to the Gentiles, and he says, formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not God.

But now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?

You observe days and months and seasons and years.

Ah, I'm afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

Now, guys, this is inflammatory stuff.

This is controversial, material.

Paul now draws, I think, a direct line between the law of the Old Testament and the idols of paganism.

He draws a line, he compares them.

He doesn't say they're exactly the same, but he calls them both slave masters.

That little phrase, whose slaves you want to be once more, implies, I think, that the law, with its weak and worthless elementary, my dear Watson, elementary principles, it's not me, it's Paul, those things parallel in some way the pagan idols of the Greek and Roman world.

So Paul warns the Galatians of turning from one slave master and the idols of the Greek world to another slave master and the law misapplied.

If I can quote Pete Townshend on a Sunday, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Paul's warning the Galatians not to be idolatrous suckers who fashion another idol out of the law that cannot justify, and in so doing turn their backs on the God who saves.

The argument is that the law left to itself, or maybe rather the law robbed of its lawful Christ-anticipating purpose.

If you take the law out of context like that, it's just as weak and worthless as the hands of the Philistine idol dagon chopped up on the floor at Yahweh's feet.

And so buckle up.

You who might seek to be justified by the law.

You who consider that you might rely on works of the law to be saved.

For in seeking to be free, you will become a slave once again.

And freedom.

Guys, I think freedom is the real goal of the whole book of Galatians.

Freedom in Christ.

For freedom.

Christ has set us free.

Stand firm, therefore, and don't submit again to a yoke of slavery.

What does such freedom mean?

In the immediate context of Galatians, it means neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything.

Right?

If you think back to that moment in Romans 14, 5 with Sabbaths, one person esteems one day as better than another, another esteems all days alike.

They don't count for anything.

So go ahead if you're led to.

Or take up other points of the law, maybe how they cut their hair, or how they wore their clothes, or what they ate, or what they drank, or where they worshipped, or when they worshipped, or how they washed their dishes.

Bring it a little closer to home, whether or not a person drinks alcohol or how often a person attends church on a Sunday, how many Sundays a month.

There's freedom.

You feel scared, you should be.

You were called to freedom, brothers.

Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

But through love, serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

There it is.

Don't use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

In other words, quit looking for an easy cover-up for your selfishness.

Quit appealing to grace to just get by.

Do you live your life in Christ at the minimum?

Are you just looking for what's the baseline?

What's the most basic amount I have to do in order to be?

The amount I have to do in order to be saved?

Is that what we mean?

How much should I read my Bible?

Oh, well, 10 minutes a day is probably good.

How many Sundays do I have to go to church in a given month?

Well, twice a month is good, but really, really, if you push me, it's just Christmas and Easter.

Do you see where this is going?

Like the classic example of a dumb question.

How far can my girlfriend and I go before we get married?

It's just a stupid and selfish question, right?

Designed only to provide an opportunity for the flesh.

Or how about how much income am I required to give to the ministry of the church?

Well, some would say 10% is a good benchmark, but we know that can get tight for some people.

10%'s from the law, right?

Peter says something similar in 1 Peter 2 when he says, live as people who are free.

Not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God, and that's the hook right there.

Living.

Are you living to serve God?

Or are you living to serve yourself?

You can answer those questions differently if you ask them differently.

Instead of asking, how much do I have to read my Bible, ask how much do I get to read my Bible?

Do you hear the freedom in that?

Instead of asking how many Sundays you have to go to church or how often, just ask instead, how often can I reasonably gather with the fellow saints for worship?

If you really love God and love those he loves, church doesn't have to be a drag.

It doesn't.

It's something you can actually wake up excited about, even without the extra hour of sleep, right?

Instead of asking, how far can we go, ask what must I do to protect myself and her from sexual immorality out of respect for her and for my God.

You see, guys?

It's the difference.

It's the difference between the kid who's excited to help dad work outside because he can't wait to be outside with dad and use the power tools, and the kid who rolls his eyes when dad says, Pick up your tool, pick up your toys.

It's that, it's there.

Or with giving, let me take a slightly different tact.

Instead of saying how much income am I required to give, realize that every last dollar in your bank account belongs to the Lord.

Every last one.

So the question isn't how can I best serve him with 10%?

It's how can you best serve him with all of it?

How can you, it's not this 10% is for God, and then 90% is all that's for me to just have fun.

That's not it.

100% of it belongs to him, so how can you use all of it to serve him?

10% can be a useful guideline from the law, right?

But in some situations, love for God and the household of faith requires something different.

Recognizing your responsibility as a husband or a father may require something different of you.

Use that other 90% to serve God too.

Do you think God is pleased when you take your kids for ice cream?

Yes, he is.

He told you to be a good dad, Dad.

So be a good dad.

Serve him in that way.

Buy yourself a new pair of boots for winter so you can still walk come April.

It's good.

But the rule isn't serving the Lord and not yourself.

The rule is faith working through love.

Paul told Timothy, nothing is to be rejected if it can be received with thanksgiving.

And that truth about money is the one that's behind all his other questions.

I said before, all of your money, all of your time, every inch of your body, and all of your thoughts belong to Jesus now.

You've been bought with a price.

So glorify God in your body, all of who you are.

We try to put the whole thing a different way.

In Christ, you're free not to just simply avoid some risky behaviors, make sure you check off some basic responsibilities.

That's elementary, that's training wheels.

It's weak and worthless.

Because in truth, guys, the works of the flesh in chapter 5, Paul says they're evident.

You see them, you know.

But in Christ, you're now free to walk by the Spirit, led by love for your neighbor as yourself.

Tell me, is it possible to have too much love?

Too much joy?

Too much peace?

Can you ever really be too patient?

Too kind?

Too gentle?

Such a thing as too much goodness or faithfulness?

What about too much self-control?

Is there such a thing?

No.

Of course not.

Paul says, against such things there is no law.

For those who belong to Christ, having been born again of the Spirit, where neither circumcision nor uncircumcision really mean anything, only a new creation.

That's chapter 6, verse 15.

People who walk in that newness of life that comes with being united to Christ and being born again, being dead now alive, when they lived that way, they've already crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Or like Paul tells the Colossians, they've already been circumcised with the circumcision, made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

You don't need to be circumcised in the flesh.

If you're in Christ, you've already been circumcised of heart.

And so in all of these things, we can sum it up like Paul does with chapter 6, verse 10.

Let us not grow weary of doing good.

Because really, guys, to boil it down, are you just doing the minimum of the Christian life with the hope that you can sneak into heaven?

Because if that's the case, you don't you're living by the law.

Or the alternative is quote the hymn writer who quotes Paul has the love of Christ so amazing, so divine, demanded your soul, your life, your all.

Because if you're just trying to get by, you've probably made up a law all of your own, even if you haven't turned the law of mode.

Specifically.

And in that case, you're enslaved to a law of your own making, just like the Gentiles in Romans chapter 2.

Romans 2 · chapter mention

And you're enslaved to another master instead of free in Christ.

And turning to another master is a great way to kill a church.

Imagine a church full of people who turn on one another over stuff like kind of clothes we wear on Sundays, or what time we gather for worship on Sundays, or which instruments we use to lead our singing.

Can we not have freedom about these things?

Or if we turn on each other and devour each other over what people do on Saturdays or Sunday afternoons, or what kind of cars we drive, or how often we eat gluten, or if we ever eat out?

Right.

Imagine a church that turns on one another over stuff like that.

Oh friends, may Paul's warning to the Galatians guard us well.

Chapter 5, verse 15.

If you bite and devour one another, watch out.

Watch out.

That you are not consumed by one another.

That's the third near-death experience for the Galatian church.

And they all go together, right?

You see how they flow?

Because the Galatians had begun to distance themselves from Paul and authoritative revelation.

They started to dabble with a different gospel at the risk of losing their freedom and becoming slaves again of another master.

But throughout, I've skimmed over the most important part of Galatians so that I can conclude with it.

And really, this thing comes first.

It's point zero.

Losing our hold on the word of God could be the end for us.

It would.

It would spell disaster.

But do you really think that Paul's opponents weren't quoting the Old Testament when they spoke with the churches in Antioch?

Do you really think they couldn't quote Scripture too?

They were.

They were just doing it badly because they misunderstood one crucial fact, pun intended.

Paul starts with this truth, and he returns to it over and over and over again.

You cannot understand the Old Testament or the New if you don't first get your head around this fact in chapter 1, verse 4, that the Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for your sins to deliver, rescue you from the present evil age.

Or chapter 2, verse 20, I've been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

Right?

Jesus Christ died.

Oh foolish Galatians, who's bewitched you?

He doesn't say, why'd you forget me or why'd you turn to a different gospel or why did you seek out another master?

He says, Oh, foolish Galatians, who's bewitched you?

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

Chapter 3, verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it's written, cursed is everyone who has hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles.

Chapter 5, verse 11, but if I, brother, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted?

In that case, the offense of the cross has been removed.

In other words, this other gospel does not fit with a crucified Messiah.

If you can make yourself righteous, then why did Jesus die for the forgiveness of sins?

It doesn't make any sense.

From chapter 5, verse 24, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

And then Paul takes the pen at the end of the letter, right?

Chapter 6, verse 11, see with what large letters I'm writing to you with my own hand.

It's those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

For even those who are circumcised don't themselves keep the law.

But far be it from me to boast, accept in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

So don't take your eyes off the cross, friends.

Don't look away.

Boast of it.

Praise Him for it.

Proclaim it.

For there on the cross and the declaration of the crucified Messiah, that's the good news.

That's the good news.

The true gospel comes from there, spoken of by God's appointed apostles.

Jesus, the chief apostle, of course, for he preached the true gospel beforehand, where hanging on the cross, he said, It is finished.

And in that moment, the Lord of life fulfilled the whole of the law with one word.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Remember the cross of Christ and walk by the Spirit of Christ.

That's the point of Galatians.

Let's pray.

Oh Lord Jesus, we come before you and we ask that you would keep us near the cross.

That the cross would be our glory ever.

For there, for there we find rest.

For there we find peace.

For there we find reconciliation with you.

For there all of our striving is put to rest.

Oh, Father, we ask for your help.

We are hard-pressed on every side in all kinds of ways.

Falsehood knocks at our door and challenges us.

Our own flesh rises up to rage war within us and cause us to trust in ourselves instead of in Christ.

And Lord, we are quick at times.

Quick at times to judge our brother.

Just as we're quick to judge ourselves.

Forgive us, please.

Return to the law or fashion one out of our own hands.

And that's why he died.

We can't even get that right.

Thank you for saving us.

Thank you for being the hope that we need.

And thank you for justifying us.

That in your mercy we could be declared righteous.

Teach us, Father, to boast only in the cross of Jesus Christ, for everything else has been crucified to us, and we to it.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.