Inside Out (Galatians 3:1-9)

Galatians chapter 3 starting in verse 1.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

I only want to learn this from you.

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

Are you so foolish?

After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh?

Did you experience so much for nothing, if in fact it was for nothing?

So then, does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law?

Or is it by believing what you heard, just like Abraham, who believed God and was credited to him for righteousness?

You know then that those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons.

Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaim the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.

Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.

Lord, as we study your word, I ask that you would be glorified.

I ask that we would draw closer to you, that we would be more and more conformed to your image, that you would fill me with your spirit to teach your word, that you would fill the hearers with your spirit to rightly divide what is true and what is of you, and that we would just come away changed and draw closer and closer to you.

In your name.

Amen.

Alright, go ahead and have a seat.

So we're making our way through the book of Galatians, and just a very quick recap here.

Galatia is a region.

When we went through 1 and 2 Corinthians, that was a city, Corinth.

When we went through Romans, that's a city, Rome.

Galatia is a whole region.

And so Paul is writing to these people who are believers but are being pulled back into the law.

They feel that they have to, they accepted Jesus, they believed on faith, but they also are being taught, well, you have to be circumcised, you have to follow the law as well in order to be saved.

And that is what Paul is primarily combating here: the good news of mankind versus the good news of Jesus.

And that's gonna keep coming up through and through this whole book.

And he gave quite a bit of testimony of what that looked like in his own life as somebody who was a Pharisee of Pharisees, who had it all, all of the law, and it was nothing compared to the gospel of Jesus.

That's what saved him and filled him and changed him.

So he's gonna continue here.

And as we've wrapped up a little bit of the testimony aspect, he's gonna start laying into, speaking them directly.

And what best way to start leading that by saying, you foolish Galatians, you not understanding, uh not knowing Galatians, who put a who cast a spell on you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

So who bewitched you to be going this direction?

And I would like to think that this isn't just Grumpy Paul, who's like it's Monday, and he's like, oh, these guys have to do a flu.

But um picture, if you will, a youth leader.

How many of you have done youth ministry before?

Okay, that's a lot.

Wow.

All of you who have done youth ministry, how many times have you looked at something one of your youth is doing and gone, really?

Well, bewilderment, baffling, a little bit of amazement at how they managed to pull that off, but ultimately, like, guys, what are you doing?

And then they go, I don't know.

And that seems to be what we have going on here with Galatia.

He's going, like, really, guys?

How can you be going this way?

How can we be going through this?

Who bewitched you to start returning to the law?

And it says, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Now, this doesn't mean that they were all there when Jesus was crucified, but they have seen the portrayal and the gospel of that working amongst them in changed lives.

They've seen it in miracles in their area, they have seen it in transformation of hearts in the pouring out of the Holy Spirit and all of these things, and he's going, like, you guys saw all of this.

Does it mean nothing?

What are you doing?

And then he hits his main point.

We have what we call a one-point sermon today, and that is in verse 2.

I only want to learn this from you.

Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

This is, I only want to know this.

How did you receive the spirit?

Was it by your works or was it by believing?

How did the spirit get inside of you?

And so we know scripturally that this is done through in Jesus, through belief in Jesus.

It's a rhetorical question.

But more importantly, why does this question matter?

Why is he asking this?

Because they may be, if they are very, very law focused at this point, being like, why do who cares?

Why does this matter?

Because this is everything.

And so when they receive the Spirit, there is throughout Scripture, we see that the Holy Spirit is a seal or a guarantee, the word arabom, which is a down payment.

So picture that idea of a pledge of money put down as a guarantee of a return purchase.

And so the Holy Spirit is that within the life of a believer.

We see in Ephesians 1, 13 through 14, in him you were sealed with the Holy Spirit when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation when you believed.

The Holy Spirit is the down payment of our inheritance until the redemption of the possession to the praise of his glory.

And again, in 2 Corinthians 1 22, he's also put his seal on us and given us the spirit in our hearts as a down payment.

And again, in 2 Corinthians 5.5, the one who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a down payment.

So, in the life of somebody who has confessed and believed Jesus and put faith on him, the Holy Spirit then indwells that individual for many different purposes, an agent of sanctification, agent of conviction, but also as a seal and as a guarantee that we belong to Jesus.

Amen.

So this is everything.

This is not peripheral.

They'll be like, well, yeah, we got the Holy Spirit.

That was kind of like the, but that's not all add-on in the thing.

No, this is everything, because that is our seal and our guarantee that we belong to Him.

So when he says, What, how did you receive that guarantee?

Was it by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

What matters is what makes us his.

And so he's asking them, Did you earn that?

No, no, you did not earn that.

And starting with that in verse 3, are you so foolish after beginning by the Spirit?

Are you now finishing by the flesh?

So he's asking then, beginning by the Spirit, having that within you, having that seal, having that guaranteed, are you now going to finish up by the flesh?

And here's the picture of this that I think is great.

And it's awesome because we know all the kids are back there, so I can be graphic.

So imagine a situation where someone has a horrible accident.

Horrible car accident.

They are being rushed to the emergency room.

And it is gnarly.

They're trying to stop the bleeding.

There are body parts missing that don't grow back.

All these things, they're just trying to save the life of the individual.

They get to the hospital, they get them, they put them on the bed, they're ready to operate, and he flatlines.

They get the paddles.

I don't know if this works in reality, but I've seen a lot of movies.

I'm pretty sure it's the same thing.

You know, and they do the thing and they go, clear! No, it's not working, do it again.

And the person comes to life, they go and then they're breathing, they turn to the doctor and say, thanks, I got it from here.

Can I have the surgical tools?

I'm gonna put myself back together now.

That's crazy.

Just because the person is brought back to life doesn't mean that they can then fix themselves.

They're not going to then start trying to stop the internal bleeding, being like, actually, can I please have the uh the hemostat, please?

Okay, good scalpel, good, good, you ready for this?

Okay, give me the tools.

That's ludicrous.

But that's what it looks like when a person is starting with the spirit and then want to be continuing on in the flesh through the law.

They want to try to operate on themselves to sanctify themselves.

And that's the issue that he's telling them.

It's like, how's that working out for you?

That doesn't work out well.

So I'm pretty sure if you someone did that in reality, they would be restrained very quickly and sedated.

So, continuing onward in verse 4, did you experience so much for nothing?

If in fact it was for nothing?

So your uh translation may be did you suffer so much for nothing if in fact it was for nothing?

It all leads to the same thing.

Everything you saw, everything you experienced, the miracles, the hardship, everything in there, was it for nothing that all of that happened?

Because if you return to the law, then that profits you nothing.

It means nothing at that point in time.

Why would you have experienced these miracles and this life and this rebirth and this hardship and all these things and go, yeah, but I'm just gonna go back to the way I was before?

That's his question in this.

And so that's the fundamental thing that Paul is trying to get them to and us to understand is that it doesn't work to have a good beginning in the spirit and then take over from here by ourselves and by our own works continue forward and earn God's favor.

Verse 5.

So then does God work or give you the spirit and work miracles among you for by your doing the works of the law, or is it by believing that you heard, just like Abraham, who believed God and it was credited to him for righteousness?

He asks, did God give you the spirit?

Did he work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law, or is it by believing what you heard?

So, common practice of idolatry throughout human history.

I do this for my God, he does this for me.

I burn this incense, I make this sacrifice, I do this penance, I prove my devotion to try to sway God's emotions, to notice me, and to give me what I want.

And that's what the law can do is to try to make God happy and say, wow, that person is really good.

I'm going to bless them and indwell them, and I'm going to do that.

And it's ludicrous because with the throughout scripture, and it was mentioned last week, our righteousness before God is as filthy rags.

It's not, uh we can't, we can't do that.

And so the analogy even further, the emergency room situation, take that one step further.

Because in reality, we weren't alive to begin with spiritually.

It's not like we were alive and then we flatlined and he brought us back.

We were never alive to begin with.

We see that in Ephesians 2, 1 through 5.

You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously lived according to the ways of this world, according to the power, ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.

We too also previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and were by nature children under wrath, as the others were also.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love he had for us, made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespasses.

You are saved by grace.

So we see in that passage that before confession and belief in Jesus, we were dead in our sins.

We were never alive.

So with that same analogy, imagine someone who has never been alive trying to bribe the doctor to bring them to life.

How do you do that?

They can't move their, they can't move, they can't talk, they can't do that.

All these things, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

But that's what it would look like to try to, by our works, receive salvation and therefore the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

That's the ludicrous nature of somebody who has never been alive trying to tell the doctor, can you please do the little shocky thing on me?

I'll give you a dollar.

It doesn't work that way.

They have no ability to do so.

And in the same way here, we, prior to confession and belief in Jesus, were dead in our sins.

At enmity with God, we were not even trying to reach God.

And he, being rich in mercy, made us alive through faith in Jesus, through belief in his son.

And that's what he's saying here.

Does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law?

Did you somehow convince God that you were worthy of having his spirit?

What did you do that made it to where you could be worthy of that?

Or is it by believing what you heard?

Throughout this book, there's going to be a juxtaposition of belief and works of faith and the law.

And this whole idea of there is nothing after Jesus in terms of salvation.

It's not, that's the entry, that's the appetizer, and then we get to the real stuff, and you either have to be really good or really smart or really connected in order to get that after that makes you truly a follower of Jesus.

We are no more alive before Jesus at any given point, and we are no less dead after Jesus, if that makes sense.

We're no more, it's once we're Jesus, we're his.

The Spirit is within us.

Now we'll talk about sanctification at one point.

We're not going to ignore that completely, but ultimately, that doesn't make you a better child of his.

He doesn't love you more because of what you do.

Rather, what we'll talk about later, we do because we love him.

That's how that works.

So it's by belief that you heard in verse 5.

Just like Abraham, who believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.

Now we see this quote throughout Scripture originally in Genesis 15, but it's quoted in multiple spots, this idea that Abraham, who we see as the father of Israel, the parental archetype there, he was declared righteous by faith, by believing in God.

And that is the big challenge there is when Abraham believed God, there was no codification of the law.

There was no Ten Commandments.

Circumcision had not been given yet.

It was faith and belief in God.

And that predated all of the law and the works therein.

All of these outward things.

And so he's bringing them all the way back to Abraham, before the law was codified in that way.

To tell them this is, he's declared righteous by his faith, not by his works.

And you have that idea of him being like, how many of you by a show of hands are cooler than Abraham?

No?

No?

Okay.

Well, he was by faith as well, by the way.

And so here's the thing to think about with this.

We live in 2023.

We have been to church more than once.

We've probably heard this before.

And we go, yeah, I understand that.

This is good or whatever.

This is still really hard for somebody to grasp in the first century AD.

This is still going to be a really big challenge.

And so it is easy for people in that day to return to the law.

It's easy for us to return to works too, but ultimately, this is the easiest course of action because it may be all that they have seen and known, or what they are being taught from those who have that heritage leading all the way back to Abraham.

And here he's telling them this, like, no, it was never by the works, it was always by belief, always by faith.

And it is by that faith and belief in Jesus that we are made his and that we receive the Spirit as that seal and as that guarantee.

So what is kind of a duff for us is a big challenge for them.

We talked about this aspect of Abraham and the belief, craving for righteousness a lot.

We went through Romans 4, and we're not going to be able to unpack all of that today, and you guys are like, thank you, Lord.

So I recommend that you go back and listen to that.

It's on the website to get a lot more of a treatise on what that aspect of Abraham and faith and belief and predating the law, what that looks like.

But what we see there is he continues to ask them, how did you get to being made right with God?

We talked about justification last week.

And then why would you move from that to something else?

Why would you graduate from that which made you alive?

Why would you take the instruments out of the hands of the master physician and try to do it yourself?

I'm not going to go into this story, but stitches are harder to do than it looks.

That's all I'm going to say.

So it doesn't work for an amateur.

So, having that said, continuing forward, he's going to go even further with this.

Verse 7, you know them, those who have faith, these are Abraham's sons.

The scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.

Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.

So, not only is he saying that salvation comes by faith alone, faith in Jesus alone, but he's also going to say that that was always true all the way back, even with Abraham, that it was by faith.

And then he's going to go even further and say that's why the Gentiles have access to God apart from the law as well.

So he's taking them this far, and then taking them this far, and taking them this far.

And this is where it gets really, really like for them to grasp and to uh be able to accept, because uh, as was talked about uh last week really, really well, the Gentiles were not a part of this.

They were seen as the outside, and then up until this point, it was assumed you have to become Jewish in order to have access to God.

And here he's saying, no, you have to become a follower of Jesus to have access to God, and that has nothing to do with your heritage.

You have that the law written on their hearts, like we talked about last week, and that faith that comes with that.

It said Saul in advance that God in verse 8 would justify the Gentiles by faith, and it proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All nations will be blessed through you.

And up until this point, they would be like, Well, yeah, all the nations are blessed through Israel because they have to become a part of Israel.

It's like, no, all nations will be blessed through Abraham in that demonstration of the salvation happening through faith alone.

So we see in Romans 2.29, on the contrary, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly.

Circumcision is of the heart by the Spirit, not the letter.

That person's praise is not from people, but from God.

So, in that passage we see here that it's not an aspect of inward faith, I mean of outward works, but rather inward faith that makes a person receive this promise of faith.

And it's circumcision is of the heart, not of the physical aspect for that.

By the spirit, not by the letter.

All of these juxtapositions through that.

Continuing forward in Philippians 3 3, for we are the circumcision, the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put confidence in the flesh.

So, there Paul is equating those.

Who are sealed and marked as belonging to God, the ones who worship by the Spirit, who boast in Jesus, and don't put confidence in the flesh.

And again, that is something that we understand, but that's something that is revolutionary back in that day because we saw in the book of Acts that multiple times there we would see preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles, we would see the Holy Spirit being poured out, and then we would see people being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no, no.

That doesn't work.

Hold on, hold on.

These people need to be told the truth.

They need to be told that the first of all, that they need to start believing the or following the law.

They also need to be circumcised, they need to do this, they need to do that, and then there were the Jerusalem councils where they met and went through all these things.

Primafacia evidence, there it is, Holy Spirit within them.

But also, uh, they do not need to be made Jewish in order to become a follower of Jesus.

And that is the big struggle that we see here.

Verse 9.

Consequently, those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.

And that is the really big struggle we're going to see throughout the whole book of Galatians is that pull and that desire to return back to the law.

Number one, because that's human nature, but number two, because it seems that they have teachers who are teaching, coming in and teaching them, no, no, no, this is what you have to do in order to please God.

And like I said, this is something that would, uh in our day, it seemed we were pretty inoculated to this conversation because, well, most of us are Gentiles and here we are.

But back then this is very, very radical and revolutionary in that aspect that salvation is by faith, not by those works.

That if you don't follow the extra parts of the law, if you don't follow, if you're not circumcised, that doesn't mean that you can't follow God.

So this is the big issue that we see here is number one, how did they get the Spirit?

By faith.

By faith in Jesus.

But then that being true, why would they continue through the law?

Now, we are uh educated, we are evolved individuals thousands of years later from these superstitions and traditions, right?

So we don't have, we don't struggle with these things, right?

Ever.

Never would we start with Jesus and then pivot to something else for our security, for our identity, for our passions and our desires.

We would never do that in this day and age, right?

Never.

Okay.

So this is what I just what I want us to be thinking about.

What is our after Jesus?

What are those things that now that we have that foundation, now that we have that security, what has taken root in our hearts, caused us to pivot to where now our passions are not just Jesus, his salvation, growing in him, growing closer to him.

But everything needs to be this way.

This is what needs to happen.

The world would be a better place if we just, if this just happened, this would be better, all that needs to be fixed is this, and we focus on that, this whole thing.

A few things with that.

Uh, there is an aspect of general cultural goodness that can take over.

I am not going to ask for a show of hands because I don't want to deal with this reporting thing.

How many of you shot someone today?

Anybody?

No?

Cool.

We're all basically good people, right?

That's cool.

We're thinking about this.

We're on we're here at church, and it's not even Easter or Christmas.

Huh?

Yeah?

That's awesome.

Which is we are here.

We finish our emails with God bless you.

We are very uh proper, we're upright, we do the things that we're doing, and we have that aspect about us.

Those are all good things.

These are not bad things at all, but that isn't what we put our hope in.

We can fall into the trap of also going, I have done all of these things for God.

Why hasn't he done this for me?

I'm hoping I'm not the only one who has struggled with that.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who struggles with that.

It's amazing how uh good devotion and right devotion and um passion for the Lord can result in.

Wait a minute, I'm doing all of these things, and I'm following him and I'm doing the right thing, and I'm sacrificing and I'm obeying him.

Why isn't he holding up his end of the deal?

On paper, that sounds ludicrous, but we struggle with that all the time.

It is so easy to be like every time, okay, I'll put it this way: it's like being a young child, where every time something is going right, I go, This is how it should be.

And every time something is going wrong, I go, What is happening?

God, where are you?

It's amazing how that works.

The blessings I see as default, and the hard times I see as God treating me unfairly.

So it's very easy to fall into that.

It is very easy to fall into a general Christian identity, to have cultural aspects take over, to have that become our after Jesus, where yes, we're followers of Jesus, but what really matters and where it consumes me, and my passions and my frustrations and everything are what I see on the news.

Very easy for that to happen, being very gentle so I don't get stoned after this.

And there are so many different things that can be in our hearts, starting with the spirit and then ending with something else.

Here's the thing.

When God saved us, he did not leave us the way we are, he did not bring us to life and go, you got it from here.

Good luck.

Here's a manual, there you go.

Here's like a college biotextbook, put yourself back together.

Holy Spirit lives within us.

Convicts and also sanctifies.

And so that inward change does drive an outward sanctification.

But that is be we obey because we love him, not we obey in order to make him love us.

That's the challenge.

God is not against effort, he is against works that try to uh earn righteousness.

And that's the big challenge with that.

So I want to be very, very careful that when I say there is no after Jesus, it's because in Jesus He continues to sanctify us and grow us and shape us more and more to his image.

But ultimately, that's a big challenge I see in this passage when he's asking them.

When he's at the beginning going, like, guys, really?

Really?

Asking that youth person, how did you manage to stick a Cheeto in your nose?

Kind of the same aspect here.

How, if you started by the Spirit, why would you try to finish by the flesh?

Why would you try to take over for God?

And then also, how did you get the spirit in the first place?

Was it by your own works or was it by something else?

And as we're coming to a close here, just want to be very, very clear.

The Bible says, and we believe, that the only way to be made right with God is by confession and belief in Jesus.

By his substitutionary death and resurrection on our behalf, our sins being transferred to him, his righteousness being reckoned to us through faith in him, through confession and belief in him.

That is our means for salvation.

There is no other end route to go around to make that happen.

And so that's why we're seeing this hammered home so well here, and why this is so important, because ultimately, at the end of the day, Jesus is everything, and faith and belief in Him is everything, and there's no Jesus and in order to be made right with God.

And that righteousness that's offered to us is both the easiest thing in the world and the hardest thing in the world because we have to let go of what we want to control to try to make that happen.

And we have to be willing to admit that we're really not actually a basically good person just because we don't murder people.

That should be a default.

And so, having that said, just want to make it very, very, very clear that for those of you who have confessed Jesus, who have placed their faith in him, you have it all.

You have the Spirit within you, you have a guarantee of his nearness, of his inheritance waiting for you, reserved, eternal, undefiled, as we see in 1 Peter 1, and you have been made right with God, and then we walk with him and grow with him, as he is our good shepherd as a result of that.

If you have not, uh I just want to say graciously that all of your goodness does not make you right with God.

All of your uh ways that you have basically been a good person doesn't make you right.

All of the alternate things, all of the I well, I think it's kind of this it's Jesus or it's not Jesus.

And I would just urge you to make that choice today, to put your faith in him.

And it's as simple as not only confessing, but also believing, having then internalized that.

So let's pray now.

Lord, I thank you so much for today.

I thank you for your faithfulness.

I thank you for your goodness.

I thank you that you have placed your spirit within us as a guarantee, as a down payment, and as a seal for those of us who have professed faith in you.

I thank you that you have not left us on our own to our own devices with just a manual on how to get better.

But rather you live within us and you guide us, you walk with us, you sanctify us, you call us to obedience.

And I ask, Lord, that we would do that.

We would not be distracted by so many other things that may be even good and noble things, but do not produce the righteousness of God.

I ask that we would stay close by your side, that we would bury down in our identity in you.

And for those who have not made that confession, Lord, I ask that you, by your spirit, you would be working on their hearts to convict, that they would desire the joy and the hope and the peace that is found in righteousness that is given by faith in you.

That we would uh rejoice in and crave that.

So if anybody wants to make that decision, it's as simple as confessing and believing.

And I just ask that you would talk to one of us afterwards if that's the case.

But ultimately, Lord, be glorified.

Draw us closer to you.

Let us not lose sight of you in this busy season.

Continue to shape us more and more in your image.

Amen.