Galatians // Conclusion [Galatians 6:11-18] (Dan Pettersen)

Yeah. So we're we're in our series

finishing up today bearing fruit.

We'll talk about that again at the end.

You ever seen one of these? This is this is a boilerplate

and these boilerplates were put on boilers obviously, but they

had had the writing on them in the same thing was stamped on

every boiler. You know, they make these plates

up and and stick them on every boiler that that went out.

Have you ever received a boilerplate response to A to a

letter or e-mail that you've written?

You know, you send an e-mail, you sent a letter and they've

replied to you and you thought this is not personal at all.

This is just the same thing they send out to everybody, right?

Yeah, people are nodding had that experience.

If you've applied for jobs, you may have may have come across

that one guy, he just finished uni and he was applying for all

these different jobs and he realised that all that every

time he got a rejection letter, they were all exactly the same,

didn't matter what company it was.

And he said, you know, obviously somebody had come up with a

really good reply at some point and this thing's gone viral and

it's just kind of the standard response that everybody sends

out. And so he decided to write a

reply. Here is his reply.

He said, Dear Sir Slash Madam, thank you for your letter of

February the 17th. After careful consideration, I

regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to

offer me employment with your company this year.

I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an

unusually large number of rejection letters.

Some of them are very high quality.

With such a varied and promising field of candidates, it is

impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite your company's outstanding qualifications and

previous experience in rejecting applicants, I've find that your

rejection does not meet my needs at this time.

Therefore, I will initiate an employment with your firm

immediately. I look forward to seeing you on

Monday. Sincerely, John.

All right, why did I tell you there?

That'll make sense in a minute. But first of all, a quick

overview of what we've seen in our study through Galatians,

right? So we started off looking at

salvation. The concept of salvation being

rescued from the eternal consequences of our sin passing

our falling short. Remember we we looked at this,

the Greek word for sin, hamatia, means to miss the mark and has

this idea of firing an error, but it drops short of the

target. We fall short because God's

commands reflect his nature. You remember this one We talked

about lying. God's very nature is truth.

Titus tells us that God cannot lie.

Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life truth is

God's very nature. So when we lie, we're going

against the the character and nature of God, right?

And so that sin we fall short of God's God's standard.

All of us have fallen short. Romans tells us quoted this

morning. There is none righteous.

No, not one right also from book of Romans right.

So we all fall short and the wages of sin is death.

What does sin is death. We're going to look at something

shortly the the Galatians, something interesting.

And I just wanna explain an interesting thing about language

in English. When we talk about peace

generally, our definition of peace is the absence of war.

Ohh, that's probably how we did it.

In fact, if you if you ask most English speakers what is the

opposite of peace, most people would answer war, war as the

opposite of peace. But in the in the Greek language

of the New Testament, and many languages are like this, the

word peace literally means to join together.

That's what that's literally what they word means.

Peace means joined together, right?

To join together the Greek word for death is Thanatos and

thanatos literally means to separate.

You can see that the the thinking, right you, you were

separated from the living, your soul is separated from your

body, right. So for 1st century Greek

speakers, although they they used the word peace kind of like

we do, if you ask them what is the opposite of peace, they

would likely say death. Yeah, see the sort of thinking

there? The wages of sin is death.

We are, we die and we are separated from God because we

fall short of keeping God's commands.

That's the bad news. The good news is that from the

beginning of time, God had a rescue plan organised.

That plan was that Jesus Christ, who didn't fall short, who

didn't send, would die in our place.

And so if we realise our sinfulness, we're truly sorry

and we ask God for forgiveness, trusting in what Jesus did on

our behalf on the cross, then multiple places in the Bible

tell us that God will forgive us and will wipe the slate clean,

that we can be joined with him, right?

Not because we deserve it, but because his love and compassion

means that he's forgiven and he won't treat us like we deserve,

right? We don't deserve it.

It's an undeserved favour. And that the Bible word for that

is grace and undeserved favour, something that you, you don't

deserve. It's a it's a gift in that

sense. And so we saw right back at the

start, right, that the church family at Antioch in Syria,

you'll see see them there just up if you kind of know your

world geography, right. So Jerusalem's kind of at the

bottom there stone Antioch, but further up in Syria and there

was church family there. And they send out Paul and

Barnabas into the Gentile world, right into the the non Jewish

world in order to share this good news.

And people believed it and put their faith and trust in it.

And they were joined with God, right?

And churches were established. And one of the regions where

this happened was this area in Turkey called Galatia, right?

And at least four churches were established in that, in that

area and and maybe others, but at least four that we we don't

have that are spoken of in in the book of Acts.

But at some point some Jewish believers from Judea came up to

Galatia and they told believers, no, no, no, having faith in

Jesus is not enough. You also have to keep the Old

Testament laws circumcised. The boys abstained from certain

foods and on and on and on. And another thinking, well,

that's not what Paul taught us. And obviously getting a response

worth of well, who is Paul? Who does Paul think he is

anyway? This is what you gotta do.

And so Paul writes this letter and told them to make copies and

pass it around from church to church in Galatia.

And in chapter 1, he started off telling him about his sorrow

that they've walked away from the true gospel, right?

The true good news and that their salvation, you know that

this good news that their salvation, their rescue is based

solely on God's grace, on his free gift of forgiveness.

And that started believing that they could earn God their way to

God by doing good works and and keeping Old Testament law.

Remember that sort of still there.

And then he spent some time in chapters one and two explaining

how and why he had the authority to speak on behalf of Jesus

because his authority was being challenged.

He talks about how this legalism right this, this trying to reach

God by following laws and ticking all the right boxes and,

and all of that. It's an easy trap for us to get

caught up. And even Peter got caught up in

it. It traps us in an impossible

situation of trying to be good enough when that's impossible,

right? We just can't be.

And he and he goes to great lengths, right, to try and

explain to us that keeping laws can't save you.

And how even the Old Testament shows that that the whole

purpose of the law was to teach us that we could never be good

enough. We need a saviour.

And he talked about that we need a rescuer chapter 3.

And then in chapter 4, he used a whole bunch of examples like

slavery and adoption and Old Testament history kind of

illustrate how this grace thing works.

And then in chapter 5, he starts to get into how that should

affect our lives right? In the way we behave and the way

we live our lives. That you can't make people do

the right thing by just passing more laws.

There isn't a law that can create love and joy and peace

and patience and, and all of those things.

Those things come from us experiencing God's grace and

letting us, letting that influence the way we see and

treat others. And it's not something that can

be forced. And then in chapter 6, he talks

about how understanding grace should affect the way that we we

treat other people. Sitting brothers and sisters in

Christ, burden, brothers and sisters in Christ, elders, other

things, right? And he says, you know how we

should do good to everyone, but especially the fellow believers.

And now he signs off, right? He's signing off this letter.

Now, this idea of salvation by grace, and we've already seen it

this morning, right? Calibre, long passage in Romans

right there, explained a whole bunch of stuff about that,

right? This whole thing of salvation by

grace was also quoted from Ephesians, right?

Almost every letter that Paul writes, he talks about this, he

talks about the importance of this.

It would be easy to think law, blah blah.

This is just another boilerplate letter from Paul.

Lots of theology, whatever. So let's pick it up in Galatians

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

chapter 6, verse #11 he says, See with what large letters I'm

writing to you with my own hand. We know from several of false

letters that he usually dictated them, a guy named Susan, he's

acted as his secretary to do that often.

So he would dictate the letters societies would write, write

down what what Paul said. But this letter was part of the

letter at least, is handwritten. He's running by hand.

He wanted them to understand how important this was, that this is

not just the boilerplate thing that he's sending out to them,

that it was personal. This isn't some boilerplate

theological essay. Yeah, this is real world, real

life stuff that impacts lives and eternities and, and he's not

messing around. Now the large litters thing,

right? He's writing with large litters

that some people think that maybe had eyesight issues cause

you know, he talks about things like that a few in a few

different places. We don't really know.

It's not specifically stated. It's probably just living in a

time, you know, before reading glasses were invented, right.

He's getting on a bit. He just gets a bit harder to,

you know, so he's writing in, in large print.

There is another possibility here though, just from some

other 1st century documents that we've found, this could be the

1st century equivalent of all caps bold type, right?

Cause that that's been done in some some other letters we

found. But you know, to say how

important it is, not sure. But the point is here that it's

personal. It's very important and he's not

messing around. He's not messing around and

we'll see this right. Then he goes into verse 12 and

he talks about the motivation of these people who are teaching

them that they need to follow Old Testament laws in order to

receive God's rescue. Here's what he says.

He says it is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh

who would force you to be circumcised, and only then order

that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

For even those who are circumcised do not themselves

keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they

may boast in your flesh, he says.

Look, the reason these people are teaching you this stuff and

getting you to do this stuff is to make themselves look good.

You know you you can imagine these people boasting to their

peers, right? I bought 5 Gentiles under the

law of Moses this week. Sort of.

But the street created right with their with their friends

who believe this stuff, he says. But even these guys know that

they can't keep the law. Ever told a lie?

You've fallen short. You know you've fallen short.

Decreasing Jesus death on the cross and bringing our salvation

can actually get you on side with a bunch of different

people. It'll get you on side with with

other legalists. Lots of people think this way,

right? People think, ohh, well, you

know, just teach people to be good.

Took all the all the right boxes.

They can work their way to God. You know, maybe they'll be good

enough. They can when you a lot of

friends, a lot of people think their way.

It can get you on on side with other religions.

Almost all religions we talked about this in in week 1 and

later on as well, right? Almost all religions are about

trying to live a life good enough that God or the gods or

the universe or however the religion works will accept you.

Do lots of good things and God will accept you.

So if you teach people you know falsely and you teach them,

look, you don't need to recognise the authority of God,

you don't reckon need to recognise that you've fallen

short and apologise to him. You just need to live your best

life. If you teach there, you'll fill

in with every other religion. That's kind of the the teaching

of every other religion. They'll also get you on side

with the government however their government looks if you

teach people that look, Jesus was just a good moral example

and we should try and be good like he he was.

Any government would be more than happy with that.

But if you start teaching people the only way to reach peace with

God is by recognising Jesus death on your behalf and and

asking for forgiveness, well now you're meddling all right.

Now you're being divisive. Now you're saying that members

of the government are accountable to God, Paul says.

The reason these people are teaching you legalism, right,

trying to follow rules instead of repentance, is that it helps

them avoid any persecution. They're not going to be

persecuted by their friends. They're not going to be

persecuted by, you know, other religions.

They're not going to be persecuted by the government

That that's why they're they're pushing this.

And then he talks about his own motives.

Why is he doing this? Why is he, why has he done all

this stuff to go into the into the world and, and all kinds of

places and we will see in a minute some of the stuff he went

through to do this. Why is he doing that?

To get this message? That's gospel.

That's good news. That salvation is by grace.

Here's what he says. But far be it from me to glory

except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world

has been crucified to me and I to the world.

How do you how do you receive glory in today's society?

What are some of the ways that we can do that?

There's there's a few in there, but kind of some main ones are,

are, are being famous. What famous people receive

glory, right? Glory means like turn the

spotlight on something that light something up.

Being famous right, gets you, gets you glory.

Being very wealthy gets you glory.

Having status gets you glory. You know, even in even in a

small sense, if you're part of a small club and you, you know,

somewhere up there, you know, having that status gets you some

glory. These are all common ways that

that people receive glory today. But the words glory and cross

don't go together right at all. Death on the cross.

And this is hard for us to kind of get a heads around.

But it wasn't just about execution, right?

The Romans had other ways of executing people as well.

Paul Headers was beheaded. You know, in Rome, crucifixion

wasn't just about execution. It was about humiliation, it was

about humiliating the person. Even Roman judges would use a

euphemism for this. They would say hang him on the

unlucky tree. That's what they would say.

He was sentenced to be hung on the unlucky tree because in

polite society, you didn't talk about the cross.

You didn't say it out loud. When Paul talks about the cross,

he doesn't mean the piece of wood.

He's not talking about the piece of wood.

He's talking about what Jesus did on the cross, Right.

He took my guilt on him. This was never about what I'm

doing for him. Yeah, it's what he did, he says.

The world is dead to me, right? And vice versa.

Meaning the culture of the world in, in glorying and you know,

fame and fortune and status and all of that.

It doesn't have the same control over me and it doesn't have the

same motivation. Like it doesn't motivate me like

it used to. This 15 for neither circumcision

counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new

creation. To the Corinthians, he said that

if anyone is in Christ, they're a new creation.

Their new creation, circumcision, was a sign of

being Jewish, right? Not being circumcised was a sign

of being Gentile, and the legalists were teaching, look,

you, you have to follow the laws of Moses, which included all the

boys being circumcised, right? Paul says.

Look, that's missing the point. Outward religion doesn't make us

a new creation. I quite like to watch a good

stand up comedy, but you know, it's quite hard to find a good

one, isn't it? Well, times you you see a thing

in this like ohh, there's a Comedy Festival on stand up

Comedy Festival, especially in New Zealand one.

And you think, Oh, this is great.

And you turn it on right and you get like a minute into a day and

the language is flying or the contents really smutty and you

think, ohh, man, but every now and again, right, you had a

really good one and you go through and think, man, this is

this is really clean and it's funny and you know, it's got and

if you're like me, you start to think wonder if she's saved?

I wonder if he's a Christian and they will might be right, but if

they are, the fact that they're not using bad language and and

you know, rugby content is kind of a, it's an outward sign of,

of that, isn't it? Like it's a, it's kind of a

symbol of the things they believe it's coming out.

Yeah. But are they saved because they

don't use bad language and their contents clean?

No, they're not. It's just kind of a, it's a,

it's an outward sign of that coming out.

Paul said this back in the relations too.

He said this, He said, you. We know that a person is not

justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus

Christ. So we also have believed in

Jesus, in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in

Christ Jesus and not by works of the law, because by works of the

law no one will be justified. He's saying, look, if you wanna

follow a rule, here's a simple rule.

Salvation is a free gift received by recognising your

sin, turning from it and asking for forgiveness.

That's what makes you a new creation, not the fact that you

were good enough, right? It's being forgiven of your sin

because you came and apologised, right?

This is the rule, right? Not by being good enough, not by

outward religious symbols, right?

By this. And then he says this.

And As for all who walk by this rule, peace, right, being joined

together and by contacts with God and mercy, right, not being

treated like we deserve to be treated, be upon them and upon

the Israel of God, right? Any Jews that live by this rule,

Same deal for them. Whether you're due or a Gentile,

the rule is salvation is by grace through faith.

It brings peace with God, and you don't get treated like you,

just you, you deserve. And you can feel the kind of the

passion here and how personal it is to Paul when he says this

inverse 17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear

on my body the marks of Jesus. So you're these 11.

Paul recounts some of the things he's been through and getting

the gospel to people. He says this imprisonment with

countless beatings and often near death.

Five times I received at the hands of the Jews 40 lashes -1

So there's a bit of cultural significance there.

If you've ever seen one of those movies, you know, Passion of the

Christ or something, you know, you've seen the scourging, the

flogging. They did so back in the 1st

century. You know, they have those, those

whips think they cat of nine tails was what came to be known

as down through the centuries. But you have a handle and they

have all these sort of leather straps that come off at, you

know, the whips. And then they tied bits of

pottery and glass and all that sort of stuff into the thing.

And so then they would whip you and it would dig in and then

they would pull it out. It would tear your flesh, right?

40 lashes with one of those was considered a death sentence

because most people didn't recover.

Yeah, so five times he got sentenced to 39 lashes.

Five times, right? Imagine that.

Imagine going through that. Three times I was beaten with

rods. Once I was stoned, three times I

was shipwrecked a night and the day I was adrift at sea.

No, in the days before light jackets and light boats, and all

of that on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from

robbers, dangers from my own people, danger from Gentiles,

danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea,

danger from false, false brothers.

And toil and hardship through many a sleepless night.

And hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and

exposure. And apart from all these other

things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for

all the churches. Imagine going through all of

that in order to get the good news that salvation is available

through faith and have people say who's Paul game?

Don't listen to Paul. What does he know?

Imagine that. Imagine how that must have felt

hearing that back that got passed back to him.

He says goodbye. From now on, let no one calls me

trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.

I sat and thought about this for a long time and I I thought

about this. Do the identifying marks on my

life lead people to Christ? Do they point people to Christ?

He closes in verse 18. He says this the grace of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Be with your spirit, President.

Amen. It's quite a short ending

compared to a lot of his other letters, which is, you know, say

hello to so and so and, you know, encourage so and so and

don't forget so and so is coming to visit.

He's just very, very, very, very to the point here, very blunt.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

There it is again, right there. Free gift, that undeserved

favour. So here's the question for us.

Here's the kind of concluding question from the series.

Will we let God's grace change us?

Will we let God's grace change us?

If you are here and you have never received God's grace in in

in the sense of having your sins forgiven, you know, maybe you

would be considered a good person by most people.

Maybe you've been in church for a while, but you've never come

to the point where you recognise your own sinfulness, that you

fall short of God's standard, and you've never honestly asked

Him for forgiveness for that. God's grace is waiting for you

today. You can be a new creation and

you create. Have the conversation with them,

experiencing that peace, being joined with God.

For those of us who have done that, we need to ask ourselves

this Am I now letting God's grace affect who I am?

Am I letting God's grace affect who I am, or am I trying to

endlessly keep a list of rules and regulations?

So the the real question is, am I connecting to him through

prayer and and reading my Bible and just relationship, right?

Having that connection, having that relationship so that that

fruit that the Holy Spirit generates, Lovejoy, peace,

patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,

self-control, those things are flowing out of me despite

whatever circumstances I find myself in.

That's kind of challenging, isn't it?

I start to think, man, is that the case?

Is is that what people are seeing?

The sermon series was called Bearing fruit.

Is God's grace bearing fruit in my life?

Yeah, We've talked about this before.

I went to a Chinese circus many years ago, and I had this dude

that was spinning plates on a stick.

You ever seen that? And then they get a plate

spinning, and it's just kind of balancing there.

And then he stands the next one up, and he spins the next plate,

and he stands the next one up, and he spins the next plate.

And then he gets to about #4 and number #1 starting to wobble,

and he goes back and he gets that one going again.

And by the end of it, he's got, like nine of these things

spinning, right? And the crowds are, you know,

right into it. And I think sometimes we look at

the fruit of the Spirit, kind of like that, and we go, well, I've

kind of got love, right? And Joy's doing okay and well, I

gotta work, come on, piece a little bit, and then I gotta go

back and work on love and I kind of get these things going.

This is the fruit of the spirit. And, and interestingly in Greek,

that fruit is singular. It's a single fruit, the fruit

of the Spirit. Are these things Lovejoy, peace.

If I am connecting with the Holy Spirit, if I am living God's

grace fix me. These things will come out.

These things will come out. Is God's grace bearing fruit in

my life? Am I connecting with God in such

a way that His Holy Spirit is working through me in that

regard? Let's pray and I'll hand back to

Tim. Father, we thank you for yeah,

Grace and what it means, and lovely thank you that even

though it's it's through all of Paul's letters, this was just so

personal because he understood it.

He understood what it meant. They have since forgiven and

what that that freedom feels like.

Thank you for it. But we just pray if there's

anyone here who hasn't experienced that, the freedom of

forgiveness from sin that Matt talked about this morning, Lord,

just pray that they would make that connection today, that they

would come to you and realise their sinfulness and connect.

Lord, thank you there. Thank you there.

You're a for giving God that you don't treat us like we deserve.

We thank you for who you are in that regard.

And Lord, and again, we just thank you that Your Holy Spirit

does work in us that brings out the fruit.

And we just pray that we would be connected with you enough

that that's the case. Well, thank you for the whole

series and the whole, all the different nuances and things

that come out about this. And we just pray that we would

all be challenged and we would be different.

And as a church family, your grace would be evident to those

around us. We just pray these things in

Jesus name, Amen.