Galatians | In Step With The Gospel (October 29th, 2017) - Mike Armstrong

Would you grab your Bibles and turn them to Galatians chapter 2?

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

As we look at uh verses 11 to 21, and as you kind of get yourself situated there in your copy of God's word, uh take a look at this picture here.

Uh you know what uh you know what this is all about, right?

You know what that is?

You see that, you know exactly what that is.

That's a three-legged race.

Right?

Maybe you've uh maybe you've seen this before, maybe you've even participated.

Uh you know, it's usually like a kid's birthday party or like kind of like a cheesy church picnic or something like that, and you know, adults get roped into it.

And you know, I don't know if you've ever done it before, but if you have or if you've even watched it, you know the importance of making sure that you and your partner are synced up and that you guys are running uh at the same pace and you've got some kind of uh of a rhythm going here because if you you know that if you don't, what ends up happening?

You fall, right?

You fall down and everyone laughs, and it's like, I don't know, it feels like for sure you have a torn meniscus and surgery, knee surgery in your future at some point, right?

That's just the kind of the way that it it works.

Now, okay, to be good at a three-legged race, it means that you, again, and your partner, you need to move in step with each other.

You need to move in step with each other.

Well, our passage today uh kind of talks about that and talks about how, as believers, our conduct and our our belief, our actions, uh must be in step with the truth of the gospel.

Must be in step with the truth of the gospel.

And the idea is that it's it's not it's not okay to claim to believe the gospel, okay, to claim to believe it, that that our salvation is found in Jesus Christ alone, but then but then act in a way or or or behave or live in a way that contradicts those beliefs.

Okay, that's not that's not cool, where we where we sort of reveal that we don't believe the gospel nearly uh deep enough.

Okay, now we all do this.

We all do this in all kinds of different ways.

You know, we sing about how you know Christ is enough for me.

We've sung that very song here, and we you know, we mean it, and we have you know, maybe a powerful moment uh uh of worship to the Lord, and and and that's real, and it's not it's not fake, but then you know we kind of go out from here after singing that Christ is enough, and and then you know, maybe experience loneliness.

We experience loneliness and maybe try and fill that loneliness with something like, let's say, you know, overeating.

You know, and again, that doesn't really line up with what we just what we just sang.

Christ is enough, but I'm kind of living in a way that suggests, well, no, I don't actually believe that.

Or, you know, we we can all probably wax eloquently about how our you know identity is found in Jesus Christ and and he secures that for us, Jesus alone.

But then, but then practically speaking, what do we do?

We go out and and we try and find an identity in, let's say, what we do for a living or the things that we're good at.

Okay, it's in these kinds of ways.

These are a couple of examples of how we don't live in step with the truth of the gospel.

There's a there's a there's a disconnect for us, all right, between you know what we say we believe and then we and then how we actually functionally, practically operate uh in the day-to-day.

And so today, hey, today we're going after this.

All right, you ready for this?

We're going after how to get the gospel from being just you know a set of kind of loosely held beliefs, some beliefs that you know we believed once when we were small, or something that we kind of know, but it's kind of out here.

We're gonna go after a guy how to go from it being like that to no, those beliefs are here.

My soul is is anchored to this.

The truth of the gospel is deep down in the bedrock, the the root of my soul and my heart, so that it so that it transforms me and propels me, okay?

All of my all of my behavior, all of my action, okay, where our where our conduct lines up with our beliefs.

Alright, so let's read this now.

Uh Galatians chapter 2, uh, starting in verse 11.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

We're gonna read down to the end of the chapter, okay?

It says this But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.

But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you force Gentiles to live like Jews?

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, 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 Jesus and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

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

Certainly not.

For if I should re 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 for God.

I have been crucified with Christ.

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

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Let's pray.

Lord, we come before you as your church, and we want to remind ourselves of the reality that our righteousness is found in you alone.

Lord, I pray that as we work through these verses right now, Lord, you would solidify us on that.

Lord, I pray that that would be the truth that would, again, drive us forward to uh living for you with pure motives.

Lord, I pray that our lives would be transformed by this truth, and we wouldn't see it as just something that's in the Bible and some truth that smart guys who love theology need to know.

No, that's for all of us.

Lord, we all need to know this.

We need to be we need to be shaken by this.

And so, Lord, by your Holy Spirit, would you move, would you transform our hearts?

Lord, would you give us a greater love for you?

Would we appreciate exactly what you have purchased for us on the cross?

God help us.

We pray all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right, well, living in step with the truth of the gospel means a couple of things.

We're gonna go through this now.

You've got your notes there.

The first one, it means rooting out the hypocrisy that undercuts my convictions.

That undercuts my convictions.

Verse 11, take a look at this.

It says this, but when Cephas, okay, so he's talking about Peter, that's another word for Peter, when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, for he stood condemned.

All right, that's that's intense.

It then says, but before before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles.

But when they came, he he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party, and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, if you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?

Alright, so what's happening here?

Well, well, Paul is telling the Galatian church now about a certain situation that he found himself in a while ago.

It was about a time where he had to confront Peter.

Right?

You got two apostles here kind of going toe to toe.

All right, now what was the problem exactly?

Right?

What exactly was the issue?

Well, well, the issue was that Peter was being a hypocrite, right?

And that is uh a fairly serious problem, right?

His conduct, it says, was not in step with the truth of the gospel.

You see that line there in your text?

That is really, if you want to like sum up the whole book of Galatians, that's really what it's all about there.

If you're into underlining, you got a pen in your hand, you got a highlighter, you need to like draw arrows, underline, circle, smiley faces, stars, whatever you do in your Bible, that is a that's a huge verse.

And that's really the core of what we're talking about here today.

Now, specifically, the issue, and we talked a little bit about it already, but the issue was about food.

It was about um eating and these ceremonial, you know, food laws, okay, that the Jews um followed.

Okay, and you need to understand that the Old Testament had uh very elaborate regulations about you know food that determined whether or not the Jews were clean uh before uh God's sight.

And so what they had to do is they had to go through very specific and and and rigorous cleansing rituals before they could just approach the Lord uh in worship.

Okay, this is something that they had to do.

God set it up this way on purpose to show them the seriousness of approaching him uh in worship, the seriousness of being in a relationship with him.

It was to show how how real sin was.

It was a problem, and you can't just treat this like it's no big deal.

Okay, this is again, it's serious, and and the need for cleansing was real before they could be acceptable in God's sight.

Again, that's what the Old Testament taught over and over again, and that was the Mosaic law.

Now, now, despite Jesus' uh teaching in the New Testament, all right, that the season of the law's governance over his people was over, and that he fulfilled the law's demands, okay, on it was on their behalf, and and he alone makes them clean now, he alone makes them acceptable in God's sight.

And it's not about the food they eat or don't eat, it's it's not about any of those things.

In fact, if you want to jot down uh Mark chapter 7, verses 14 to 23, you can read about more of that uh on your own time and how Jesus himself taught about this, okay?

Mark 7:14–23

So despite Jesus' clarity on these things, Peter still didn't quite get it.

He didn't quite get it.

In in Acts chapter 11, again, you can jot that down as well.

Acts 11 · chapter mention

Okay, he kind of starts to get it, and he shares this experience.

You know that story of you know the sheep being let down, and it's this vision that he has, and there's the animals, you know, on there, and then every man's life verse, rise, Peter, kill and eat, right?

You've got that.

Are you guys alive?

You guys with me?

Okay, cool.

So that life verse that you guys have, right?

Rise, Peter, kill, and eat.

It was this, it was it was the Lord's way of saying that the Gentiles are my chosen as well.

And it's not about food, and it's not about that making a person clean or or not clean.

It was through that vision that he realized Jesus accepts, God accepts Gentiles when they trust in Jesus Christ.

And so he even he gets it, and it's a it's this mind-blowing thing for him, and though his whole life he'd always separated himself from Gentiles and seen them as unclean, he actually eats with them, and his his conduct does line up with what he believes here.

He realizes it realizes that it's it's Jesus who purifies, not something that that I do, and and this isn't something just for the Jews, it's something for all people.

Okay, but what Paul shows us here in Galatians chapter 2 is that for Peter, uh old habits die hard.

Galatians 2 · chapter mention

Right?

Old habits die hard.

It says that he was eating with the Gentiles, all right, but he had he had slipped away in practice from really truly believing in, leaning into the reality of the gospel.

Okay, it says that he began eating what he was eating with Gentiles, but when but when certain men came from James, he drew back and he separated himself.

It says he feared the circumcision party.

Meaning he feared the the false teachers, he feared the criticism that he was gonna get for, oh, you shouldn't be you shouldn't be eating with gentiles, they're still unclean and they need to follow laws.

And he starts to fall into that.

Okay, in other words, he claimed that that he claimed to believe that Jesus alone makes a person clean, which is true.

He claimed to believe that, but his actions began to suggest something different.

Okay, and and people were starting to see that.

That that no, your you know, your cleanliness, your acceptance in God's sight is is actually based on the foods you eat.

Okay, and the and the laws that you follow and how well you obey the Old Testament laws that again, Jesus is actually fulfilled.

I.e., he's talking about works.

Your works will really save you.

Okay?

That's what he was saying.

See, see how he's being a hypocrite?

You see that there?

He wasn't lining up.

Verbally, he would have told everybody, he would have made it really clear that you know that he was a Christ follower, he was relying on the on the finished work of Jesus on the cross for his salvation.

Okay, but in practice, he was actually behaving the opposite, he was acting the opposite, you know, as though he needed to earn his salvation again through his adherence to the law.

And his hypocrisy was undercutting his convictions.

You see how that was happening?

And it says Paul calls him out, right?

He says, You're not you're not living in step with the truth of the gospel.

The gospel says this.

It is very clear, you're starting to go over here now, and you're starting to live like you used to.

And it was at the point where his hypocrisy was starting to lead other people astray.

It says, even including Barnabas, was led astray and and separating themselves from the Gentiles, real damage was being done here.

Now, Peter's hypocrisy here was really nationalism.

It was nationalism, feeling like you know their nationality was superior.

If you want to give it a really ugly word, racism.

Racism.

That's what was happening here.

He fell into this trap that the Jews were better, they were they were culturally better than the Gentiles, and that the Gentiles need to be more like us.

Okay, they need to behave like us, they need to follow all of our rules if they want to really be accepted by God.

And it says here that the motive of his heart in all of this was fear.

Right?

It says that he feared the circumcision party.

Again, all of this was again out of step with the with the gospel for sure, in the sense that in Christ, no one is superior compared to somebody else.

There's no like some people are up here and others are down here.

There's no levels of you're better than another person or another person is better than you.

You've heard the phrase, at the foot of the cross, the ground is level.

That's where we all stand.

It's level there.

All are accepted, all are valued in God's eyes.

And on top of that, there's no need to be paralyzed by fear anymore and caring about criticism or caring if somebody doesn't approve of you and all of that.

Why?

Because we have all of the approval, okay, all of the care that we would ever want through Jesus Christ.

That's what the gospel tells us.

The God of the universe already approves of you.

Again, maybe to put it like in kind of stark terms who cares if other people don't like you?

Who cares if other people don't approve?

Right?

That's a pretty big deal.

All of that frees us from this fear that can drive us towards hypocrisy in all kinds of different ways.

So, hey, question for you.

You know, in what ways are you acting hypocritically?

In what ways is your conduct out of step with the truth of the gospel?

Right?

Again, I mentioned earlier we're we're all like that.

We're all hypocritical in certain ways.

You know, do you tend to, and I mean it's usually, you know, pretty subtle, but do you tend to see yourself as better than those around you?

Have you even maybe come into church today and been like, that person, that person's a little a little below me in certain ways, or or I'm below that person in certain ways.

You know, and and maybe it's maybe it's not the kind of you know, racism that I mean was even in the news yesterday down in Tennessee, and you know, the white supremacists uh, you know, out there marching and the protests against them and all of that, and you're like, maybe that seems very removed for us down to our neighbors uh to the south, but maybe, just maybe there is just a touch of that kind of a thing going on in your hearts.

And maybe for you you are critical of people who aren't just like you.

You know, and listen, we need to, you know, not be so dumb and so blind and so foolish to think that that doesn't creep into our hearts up here north of the border.

We live in an extremely multicultural area, don't we?

I've heard Toronto is the most multicultural city in the entire world.

And our our church is multicultural and multi-ethnic, and and that is an awesome thing because that is a picture of what heaven is gonna look like.

And an amazing thing.

There is just there is just no room whatsoever for looking down on a person for the color of their skin or their culture or their ethnicity or anything like that.

Can I be any more clear?

Racism, down on that.

Okay?

No space for it.

Have no problem going on the record and saying that.

All right, and maybe that's you a little bit, and and you would admit that, or maybe you have it and you're not really seeing it and you need to, but but maybe you look down on other people because you know they're in a different social class than you.

This is another way where elitism and superiority complex kind of comes into place, and maybe you're like, well, that person doesn't have money, so they might may must not understand some things, and you know, I would be a more of a benefit to the church because you know I have a certain amount of wealth, or maybe it goes the other way because it goes the other way as well, right?

And well, that person has money and they must not get it, and you know, I'm more like the Lord because I didn't ha I don't have very much and all of that.

You see how it goes both ways?

And we can look down on people regardless of where they are, as long as they're different, we don't, you know, we separate ourselves from them, okay, and maybe that's you know, maybe that's you.

Okay, or maybe it's somebody supports a different political party than you, and so you can't look at them the same, and you can't believe, you know, they're not a real Christian, are they?

Because they support the blank party, right?

Maybe that's for you, or or or maybe you tend to separate yourselves and look down on a person because they don't share all of your little preferences that you have about every little thing that you can have a preference about.

Right?

And maybe it's something like I'm gonna really open up a can of worms here.

Maybe it's something like Halloween.

Right?

Maybe it's something like vaccinations.

Okay, we're gonna stop right there before someone rushes me.

Right?

And let me let me just say this it's okay to have preferences on these things.

It's all right to be like that and to have that and to feel even strongly about it.

It's okay.

But not to look down on other people because they don't share your preferences.

Understanding that we have some liberty in some of these things.

Right?

And understanding that you're not better than somebody or someone's below you because they don't share your position on things that maybe the scriptures aren't even all that clear on.

Right?

What are the different ways that that you are hypocritically living out of step with the gospel?

Listen, root out that hypocrisy.

Root it out and and get realigned with the gospel again.

Don't let that undercut your convictions about these things that you hold to.

Your righteousness is not found in what you think makes you better than another person.

Okay, your righteousness is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone.

Right?

That's it.

That's what makes you clean.

That's what that's what makes you what you are.

That's what makes anybody.

We're all there because of Jesus.

Okay, and that's really the second thing here, getting into it.

Okay, living in step with the truth of the gospel means reinforcing where my righteousness actually comes from.

Okay, verse 15, take a look.

He says, We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.

Yet we know, okay, I kind of picture that like being italicized, right?

Trying to emphasize, 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, how many people will be justified?

None, right?

No one will be justified.

Right?

He states that very clearly here.

Now, the sense that you get here is that Paul's still talking to Peter.

Right?

He's still sharing this with him.

Now, now keep in mind what was what was Peter?

Who was Peter?

Only an apostle, right?

Like he was like a leader of the church.

He was a pillar in the church.

I mean, it's safe to say that he'd probably heard the gospel message once or twice.

Right?

He'd heard it a ton of times.

He'd shared it with many people.

He'd led tons of people to Christ before.

He'd proclaimed it clearly.

And yet here, Paul, what does he do?

He reinforces for Peter the core of the gospel message.

He boils it right down, which is justification by faith in Christ.

And Paul reminds him of this and says, Man, you've drifted from this core thing.

And he realizes that on a functional heart level, Paul, or Peter rather, needs to be, needs to be reminded of this, where his righteousness actually comes from.

Now, John already mentioned while we were, you know, in our singing time, that this is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

They're calling it Reformation 500 here.

And that's actually on Tuesday, which is Halloween, interestingly enough.

Okay, but the doctrine of justification, what we're talking about here, by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone are we saved.

That was really at the heart of the entire thing.

You know, I kind of found that interesting today as I'm going or this week, as I was kind of going through this passage, I'm like, wow, it's the 500th anniversary of this, and this happens to be the passage that we're talking about here at church.

It's kind of amazing the way that the Lord kind of works all of that out.

Okay, and so this is the idea that Jesus, or that God rather, declares us righteous.

He declares us clean and acceptable in uh God's eyes when we trust in Christ's righteousness alone.

Okay, which he, of course, secured for us through his perfect obedience to the law, his death, and his resurrection on the cross.

This was the very, okay, the very doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church, as John mentioned, had strayed so far from.

Okay, they had kind of taken the Bible and said, all right, let's leave this over here now, and then go and like kind of do church.

And it actually even got to the point one of the crazy things that was happening, you've heard of indulgences before, right?

It was to the point where you could actually come and like bring money to a priest and pay him to have your sins forgiven.

Right?

Doesn't sound great.

Right?

Like it's it's a huge money grab.

And it was, you know, being uh being a priest, being in the church, it was it was so tied into the culture, and it was it was all about power and it was all about these things, and they strayed so far, you know, away from all of these things.

And so Martin Luther, again, as John said, he was a monk, and he was this guy who tried so hard in his own strength to impress God.

And he was like as hardcore as you could ever be about the law, and I gotta follow this thing to the letter, and he was he was always, you know, he always carried around with him this sense of like, I'm not good enough.

And no matter how hard I try, I'm I'm imperfect.

And he would beat himself up about this, and finally one day he got his hands on a Bible and he started to study it, and he realized, wow, I'm broken, and and it isn't even up to me to try and fix myself.

That's why Jesus came.

And it's his righteousness that I need to need to lean into here.

And so he notices this and he and he gets saved.

And as he's studying the scripture, he realizes a whole bunch of things here that the church had just not been proclaiming at all.

In fact, they were teaching the opposite.

And so he kind of jots these things down, 95 things, 95 thesis, we call it.

And he took it to the to the castle church in Wittenberg and he and he nails it to the wall, which was not a completely uncommon thing.

That's what people would do.

But really, it sparked this, what we now know as the Protestant Reformation.

And then the Roman Catholic Church was not at all happy about this.

And guys like Luther and John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli and many others as well helped steer the church back to the scriptures.

Back to what does the Bible say?

That's what we need to get back to.

Not what, not what messed up man thinks, right?

It's not about any of that stuff, it's about what the Lord says.

And so he reminds them again of this doctrine that we're looking at here today, the centrality of it.

Okay, Luther understood that this is the linchpin to our entire faith.

This is everything.

And of course, that's exactly what Paul's saying to Peter.

It's the exact same thing.

He takes Peter to the doctrine of justification because he realizes a very important thing.

He needs to jot this down.

He realizes a very important thing.

That behavior is always, always the result of heart-level belief.

You need me to say that again?

Behavior, okay?

Behavior is always the result of heart-level belief.

How you and I behave externally, okay, reveals what we truly believe in our hearts.

It reveals that, okay, or to put it yet another way, what we really believe, okay, what we really believe eventually always leaks out of us in terms of behavior.

Paul knew this.

He was seeing it in the lives of Peter, in the life of Peter.

He was seeing this in the Galatian church.

He's not just telling a story to like entertain the Galatian church.

He's like, this is what you guys are doing.

You guys are going back to the law and thinking you need to do this.

This is what makes you acceptable in God's sight.

No, it's it's an abandonment of the gospel.

That's what you're doing.

Now, again, Peter would have told you and I, you would have proclaimed a million times that he believes firmly in the doctrine of justification by grace through faith.

He believed all that, but his behavior was suggesting that on a heart level, somewhere in his heart, he believed, you know, otherwise.

He felt as though he, you know, he was made righteous through his works.

And it was starting to, again, ooze out of him by eating or abstaining from certain foods.

And so his behavior reflected that when he distanced himself here from his Galatian, or sorry, his Gentile brothers.

And so Paul, he takes Peter, he takes the Galatian church, he takes us to the doctrine of justification by grace in faith alone, because he knows that that's the only way to liberate our hearts from this.

That is the only way from the tendency that you and I have, we all got it on some level, to try and earn our own salvation, to be our own saviors, to look to other idols to try and save us or affirm us or make us whole or feel happy or whatever it might be.

Right?

And so Paul takes Peter here, he takes us here, and showing us the need to reinforce our hearts with where our righteousness actually comes from.

It doesn't come from us, it comes from Jesus.

And Paul knew that if Peter's heart would just hold on to this tightly and uh you know and not let go of the doctrine that Christ alone justifies, then Peter's behavior would ultimately fall in line with all of that.

And that hypocrisy uh would not be the thing that we would all be, they would all be seeing in that moment.

Now, if Peter needed to hear this, okay, you know where this is going, right?

If Peter needed to hear this, do you think we do?

Uh yeah, yeah, big time.

Okay, when you're when you're tempted to make yourself righteous or find your righteousness in something else other than Jesus Christ, or try and present yourself as clean and acceptable to the Lord, or think that it's you know somehow on you to accomplish what Jesus already did.

Okay, it's this doctrine that you need to administer to your soul.

You need to like actually do this.

You need to, you need to you need to pray this into yourself.

You need to reinforce your heart with it.

Okay, literally, maybe even out loud as you're at home or you're driving in your car or whatever it is, you're walking through the mall and looking at all the ways that you know people want you to buy an identity, right?

It's actually reminding yourself over and over my righteousness does not come through my performance to some rules, through my goodness at all.

My righteousness comes from Jesus.

And he has already declared me righteous.

He gives it to me as a gift.

I can't earn this.

I I did nothing to merit this whatsoever.

Again, I've said it before, but the only thing we bring to the table is our garbage.

Right?

Our sin.

Here, Jesus, you take that.

That's what I'll add to the equation.

Right?

That's humbling, but that's reality.

And listen, as your as your hearts find strength in this glorious truth, the doctrine of that we've been declared righteous through what Jesus did.

We're just receiving that by faith.

We're receiving it, it's not by works whatsoever.

As your hearts find strength in that, listen, your behavior ultimately, over time, is gonna align with that.

Your behavior will, and it's gonna come from the heart.

Because it's gonna be reflected from a heart that actually loves Jesus.

Lord, thank you for what you've done.

Lord, this is amazing, this is incredible.

Lord, I want to follow you.

I want my heart to be in step with the gospel.

Now you notice here as Paul's talking here, it just all builds, right?

It's he's just building to the next thing here, the last thing.

Okay, living in line with the with the truth of the gospel means renovated motives now drive my obedience to Christ.

Renovated motives.

Okay, verse 17.

Verse 17, but but if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?

Certainly not.

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

Now, these are sort of sort of tricky verses to understand here, but likely Paul was addressing an accusation by the false teachers kind of against him.

And they were saying that those who those who promote justification by faith in Jesus Christ, they don't take the law seriously enough.

They're kind of loose on sin and they're relying on Jesus and they're not bringing any of their hard work to the table.

Yeah, Paul's like, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Right?

In other words, they believe that that those who rely on this doctrine, and maybe even Jesus himself, actually promote sin because they don't take the God, the, or sorry, the uh the law seriously enough.

And Paul's like, nonsense, right?

Certainly not, that's what he says.

Grace doesn't promote sin, it it promotes that Jesus paid for sin.

That's what it does.

He's like, and it makes no sense for us to you know to rebuild the sinfulness that Christ died to destroy.

Right?

That's not what it's all about.

Right, verse 19 says, For through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God.

Meaning that he died to the law as uh uh as a system of salvation.

Like following the law is not what gonna s uh is not what's gonna save me.

That that's not my system of salvation anymore.

So I'm relying on Jesus so that I might live for the Lord and obey the Lord with a heart that's motivated by love.

It's motivated by love.

Take a look.

He says, I have been crucified.

Speaking of life verses, this is mine.

I have been crucified with Christ.

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

And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, loved me, right, and gave himself for me.

He says, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

So you see here, Paul's been he's been building this case all along.

He's saying that if your behavior is not in step with the you know, with the truth of the gospel that you claim to hold to, then reinforce your heart.

Go back to the core, the foundation all of this, that that Jesus is your righteousness, and and you and what you do are not.

And you know, and as you do that, uh it'll renovate your heart motives.

And you'll want to follow the Lord.

You're not trying to earn your salvation through slavish obedience to the law.

You've been crucified with Christ to that empty and that that awful way of living.

You live by faith now.

You live by faith through the through the one who loved you and gave himself for you.

That's what that's what Paul is saying, is he's building this.

What Paul is showing us here, he's showing the Galatians, he's showing Peter, he's showing you and I.

That when we really grasp this here on a heart level, when we when we realize it, when we are genuinely humbled by what Jesus did for us, that he lived righteously in our place, because he loved us and delighted to rescue us from the demands of the law and the penalty of sin.

When we get that, it's in our motives for obedience completely transformed.

Completely transformed.

We go from like this cold, lifeless, kind of dead existence of, you know, coming to church because I guess I'd better, my wife's dragging me, or, you know, I guess I better read this book because that's what Christians do.

And I guess I better talk about Jesus once in a while to my kids to kind of get the Lord off my back a little bit.

Right?

We go from that kind of a of a mentality and a heart to like, man, I I can't believe he did this for me, Lord.

This is incredible.

I I'm so undeserving.

I'm so thankful though.

I'm so grateful for what you have done.

Lord, whatever you want, that that's what I want now.

You are an awesome savior, and I want to just give my life to you.

And you know, wherever you say, I will go.

Whatever you, whatever you ask, I will gladly oblige.

It's my joy to obey.

Right?

You see how the motives, the motives change there.

Listen, if you've been sensing that your your walk with the Lord, your relationship with him, and you know, and maybe life itself, is you kind of become this you know three-legged race gone wrong.

Right?

And you really need to consider here that maybe you've maybe you've stopped walking in line with the truth of the gospel.

In your heart you've you've disengaged from it.

You know, you don't you don't think about it, you don't thank the Lord for it, you don't truly worship him for it, you mentally you don't even think about who Christ is and and and what he's done for you.

Can I just encourage us here as a church?

Let's be a church that's committed to this, committed to continually coming and gathering here on Sundays for starters and and and being willing to realign our hearts with this amazing truth, with this amazing reality that Jesus saves.

You know, as we've come, you know, we're all coming from, you know, probably you pull anybody here in this room.

Some of us have had brutal weeks, some of us have had a hard go, and we have drifted away from all of this.

And it's so important that we come here and we hear the gospel, we get in front of God's work and remind ourselves, oh yeah, oh yeah, that's right.

There is hope in Christ because of what he has done.

Oh yeah, that's right.

My my God is awesome.

Oh yeah, that's right, my God does answer prayer.

Oh yeah, that's that's right.

My my Jesus loves me.

Right?

That's what we're doing as we come before him as a church, continually realigning our hearts and our minds, and then ultimately our behavior and our obedience and all of it back on the gospel.

We cannot stray from this.

We can't wander away from any of this.

To do that is to invite disaster, to do that is to invite real problems.

So, can I encourage us to learn to sync up with the gospel?

And listen, beyond Sunday mornings, we need to be doing this throughout the week, don't we?

We need to be we need to become self-feeders, we need to be coming before God's word.

We need to be, you know, be rallying around other believers with us who can encourage us and who can challenge us and remind us of these great things.

You know, and instead of just walking in here, just always beat up all the time because we haven't spent any time with the Lord since last Sunday when some other guy opened the Bible for me.

Right?

Instead of that, we're coming in more fired up.

Like I want I want to come in here excited about what the Lord has done.

I I want to come in here and worship him for who he is.

Let's be a church like that.

Never straying away from the gospel, never leaving it behind, never forgetting about it, and watching our hearts transformed.