The Dangers of Covenant Mixing and the Power of God's Grace

How many of you are righteous and have rights standing with God?

Let me see your hand.

You have it right now.

You are saved right now because faith says, I have it now.

Hope says, hope is great, but hope is in the future.

Hope is for tomorrow.

But now faith says, I have it now.

So you say, I believe in Jesus.

I believe that He died on the cross for my salvation.

You're saved now.

Welcome to the City Light Church podcast.

Thanks for joining us today as we look into God's Word and discover the hope and truth that

He has for us.

If you want to connect with City Light Church, feel free to visit us at citylightnyc.com,

that's citylightnyc.com.

Pastor Boyan Jansik and his team believe that the power of the Holy Spirit is already

working in our hearts and minds.

As you listen to today's teaching, remember that you are deeply loved by God.

You are surrounded by His grace and that He has a real hope and a future for you.

We're in the middle of a series, on Galatians.

We don't often do a series here, but when we do, it's usually on Galatians.

And here we are right now in the middle, we're in chapter 5.

So let me do a brief recap for the benefit of everyone, including the first time

guest and those of you who have been here for every single service of this series, we call

it the clash of the covenants.

The clash between the old covenant system of God's law and the new covenant system of

God's grace.

And you'll see throughout the New Testament, you'll see clashes of it, but nowhere like

in the book of Galatians where that's the primary thing over and over and over again that's

addressed.

And there's such benefits to really understanding the new covenant of God's grace and actually

living there as opposed to what we too often find which is a mixing of the two different

systems.

And Paul says that if you mix, you actually get nothing.

You have now nullified and frustrated the grace of God and if there's mixture in your life,

you're actually not mixing, but you're living under the old covenant system of the law.

You might say, what's so bad about that?

Well, I'll define the old covenant system of God's law for you.

It is a system.

I use that word system because that's one of the definitions for dispensation, a system

of order.

It's a way in which we would relate to God.

And it was based on our ability to keep God's law.

Hint, we didn't have any.

We constantly under the system of law kept falling and coming up short.

And so under the old covenant system of law, you endeavored and attempted to be approved

onto God based on your own law keeping, based on your own holiness, based on your own

strength and effort.

It really was a system designed to show us up.

That was the pretty definition.

Use a more vernacular definition just kind of off the cup.

It's a system meant to show you up and cure you of your pride where you would keep falling

and realize that you're not all that.

That's it.

It's a system where you realize you're not all that.

You're stripped of your pride.

You realize that there is a holy standard that's imposed upon you, but you are not giving

any ability to meet and rise up to that holy standard.

And so it forces you to look to a savior.

It forces you to look to God who can now do for you on this side of the cross.

He can do for you what you can never do for yourself.

Under the new covenant system, you're already past tense.

There's a rest in ED past tense, completed, finished.

Under the new covenant system, you already past tense are totally approved unto God.

You're accepted.

You're forgiven.

Not based on what you've done or anything that you could ever do, but based on what

he has done for you already, amen.

And so we just finished Galatians chapter four where Paul, he talked about Abraham and

Abraham's wife Sarah and how they were given a promise that they were going to have Isaac

and Paul himself says Isaac is a representative of the new covenant.

In fact, Isaac's name means laughter because when you fully are living in a new covenant,

you'll have joy.

Amen.

You'll have a lot of laughter.

This is what the world even notices that whenever there is religion, there's no joy.

And the old covenant system of the law is religious.

Religion, the very word, means back to bondage.

What's the bondage?

The bondage is that you have to work.

You have to push.

You have to try.

You have to, the burden is on you.

You have to cross every tea and that every eye.

It's exhausting.

But Isaac means laughter because under the new covenant, you realize just like the song

we sang, he did all the work for you and passed that victory on to you.

That brings a ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

That's why I believe the Holy Spirit touches some people to laugh in service.

By the way, the Holy Spirit wants to touch all people and fill them with joy.

Some people yield and laugh.

Amen.

Because letting you know that you covenant, it's a completed work.

He contrasts Sarah who had Isaac, and that's the new covenant with Haggar, who had Ishmael

that was a product of the flesh, a product of self effort.

And he says, that's symbolic of the old covenant system of the law.

And then he says, you cannot have them live in the tent.

What was the word back then?

The word was drive out, cast out Haggar and Ishmael.

They cannot live together in the same room, in the same house.

They can't be together in the same tent.

What's Paul saying?

He's saying, you cannot have the old covenant system and the new covenant system in the

same tent.

You cannot have any mixture.

Pick one.

And go all in then.

If you want to be approved unto God based on your own self effort, based on your holiness,

then go all in.

The only catch is, under the system of law, if you're guilty of breaking it on only one

area, you're guilty of breaking the entire thing.

So you have to be perfect forever on this side of heaven, without one slip up, who's

ready to take that challenge on?

Oh, well, welcome to the new covenant then.

Under the new covenant, he's already kept the law and its perfection for you and transfer

that victory over to you, amen.

So let's continue on in Galatians chapter 5.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

He spent all this time describing and illustrating and declaring this great liberty that we have

as a result of grace, as a result of the completed work of Jesus under the new covenant and

his admonition is for us to stand firmly, stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which

Christ has made us free.

And do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

What's the yoke of bondage?

It's living under the old system of the law.

And another place in Corinthians, he called that system the ministry of death.

It keeps producing death in you.

If you're looking at yourself and trusting in yourself and taking on the responsibility

of trying to please God, it's going to bring death.

So what's the solution?

Shouldn't I be trying to please God?

You should realize that when you put your faith in Jesus, you already are totally pleasing

to Him.

So even with all my stuff?

Yes.

Yes, he sees you through the lens of the blood of Jesus.

He sees you in Christ.

There's nothing you could do to cause him to love you anymore.

There's nothing you could do to add to the already finished work.

There's nothing you could do to manipulate him into making you more righteous.

It's done.

And now out of that, now flows fruit, not works, but fruit, fruit.

And you look more like Jesus and you act more like Jesus.

But the motivation is different.

It's not because you're trying to get God to approve of you more.

It's because you're resting that you already are approved.

Do you see the difference?

It's a huge difference.

It'll make a huge difference in your peace.

It'll make a huge difference in the way you receive answers to prayer.

Verse two, indeed, I Paul said to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit

you nothing.

Now here he was dealing with these Judaizers who came in and they told the believing Christians,

it's nice that you believe in Jesus, but you also have to do something.

This sounds like church to me.

It's nice that you receive Jesus.

I feel like in church, we do this bait and switch tactic.

We tell people salvation is free.

You're forgiving us is free.

And we get them in the door, we get them in the seat, and then we do the bait.

We got them in with the bait and we do the switch.

Okay, but now in order to stay saved, and then we make them work, and we make them work.

And we put all this law on them to extract more stuff from them, more work, more money,

more whatever, and it produces death in them, and they've been gilted and manipulated,

and their motive is now all off.

They're trying to add to the finished work of the cross.

They're working.

They think that if I do X, Y, Z, then God is obligated to do ABC for me, and it's this

weird transactional relationship, it's wrong.

It's off.

It produces death.

Amen.

Go back, just keep it there, thank you.

Because a lot of people get hung up with, if you become circumcised, Christ will profit.

You're nothing because that was the problem that they were dealing with.

They were saying you have to also be circumcised.

Now that's not the problem today.

We don't have any group coming in, thankfully.

And telling all the men in the church.

But we do have other teachings, other preachers, also the sound of our own head that will always

side with the system of the law.

The way we've been brought up, our fallen nature, our unredeemed mind will always side with

the system of the law so that we will think we have to add to the completed work.

When the whole declaration of the new covenant, the declaration that he reiterates over and

over again in Galatians is, Jesus plus nothing equals everything.

Not Jesus plus the stuff that you do, hallelujah.

Let's keep reading.

Verse three, and I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised, who adds to the

finished work of the cross, that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.

We've got to do the whole thing now.

And if you're living that way, he says, you have become in the next verse, you've become

estranged from Christ.

The Bible says, when you're saved, you're married to Jesus.

But if you turn your eyes onto yourself and your own strength, your own self effort,

and you think that you fit into that equation of salvation, he's thinking you had the equation.

All you have to do is receive.

That's great news.

You want to get all involved?

Now you're divorced from Christ.

You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace.

Look at that phrase, fallen from grace.

Have you ever seen that phrase, fallen from grace before?

Whenever a pastor falls, the next day the headlines are, so and so, falls from grace.

But why don't we let the Bible define the Bible?

And that's not how the Bible uses that statement.

Even from grace, never in the Bible means that you fell into sin.

Look how Paul uses it.

It means that you're mixing the covenants.

It means that you're not living under grace.

That's what it means to fall from grace.

When we were in Guatemala, we try to go back every year.

We're going again in February.

We've partnered with the Guatemala Mission since 2009.

And I would notice some folks lying in the street totally drunk out of their mind and

asked the missionary about them and he said, oh yeah, the church gave up on them.

And they told them that they've fallen from grace.

And maybe you've heard that statement fallen from grace with regard to somebody who fell

into sin.

And I asked about the stories and the stories when something like they went back to alcohol,

the church said, oh no, you've fallen from grace.

And then guess where they ended up?

They ended up drinking more alcohol and they ended up sleeping in the gutter for 16 hours

a day.

And now the church has turned their back and I'm saying, oh, you've fallen from grace.

If you sin, you don't have to sin.

But should you fall?

The Bible never says you fell from grace.

In fact, if you're a Christian and you fall, you fall into the arms of a loving savior.

He still loves you.

You're still forgiven.

When you hear the lie that you fall from grace, it only forces you into sin even further.

Fallen from grace means that you've turned your back on grace.

Fallen from grace means that you're mixing covenants.

Fallen from grace means you're trusting in yourself.

I'm so glad God is stable unlike us.

God is strong unlike us.

I'm so glad he's not moody like us up and down emotional like us.

We talk about these things.

I know they might not be unrelatable, but a good thing, you know, circumcision isn't

relatable right now.

No group is going to come in from the outside protesting us because some men may not be.

But all of us, I do this inventory of my life on the daily.

What am I doing where I think I'm scoring points with the big guy?

What am I doing where I feel that I can maybe get God to look at me more favorably?

That's mixing the covenants.

We do this kind of stuff all the time.

I shared in the first service.

I'll share it here.

We were on vacation this summer.

Went to Montenegro, then went to Bosnia, we were in Sarajevo, and I just said very frankly,

and now I'm on vacation, my prayer life is very different.

It's not exactly like I'm waking up in the morning and pressing in for several hours,

you know?

I'm chilling.

My prayer life is holding my wife's hand and going, oh, hallelujah, oh, you know, Lord,

this is so beautiful.

Praise the Lord.

Get a cappuccino.

Jesus, I love you.

And we're just enjoying, you know, and we're doing that for days and one night, we're

going to bed.

It's midnight.

In the Sarajevo hotel room, and my phone rings, and I see that, it's my neighbor.

My stomach just dropped.

It's my neighbor from New York.

I pick up the phone, I hear, hey, man, big flood, lots of rain.

Your place is totally flooded.

So is mine.

I'm across the Atlantic Ocean.

And the first thing that I hear is, because you're not praying like you should be.

Oh, now you're going to come to God and ask Him to help.

Now you're going to come and ask for a miracle.

I heard that.

This is me.

I'm the preacher of grace.

But I heard that voice.

I heard that satanic.

Do you think you're going to now just go into prayer mode, and you're going to just

activate God's, no, see, there's people who think like if they were to get a call

like that, they think, well, I can't now come to God.

I'm not in the right place with Him.

You're in the right place with Him.

So they think I need to, I need to pay in some way.

So they go, okay, maybe I'll fast.

Maybe I'll first warm up with a three hour little prayer session just to show God that

I mean business and that I'm serious.

And that really I just got distracted with Europe, but really his heart is mine and mine

is His.

And I'll show Him.

I still the same homie and they'll work and they'll work.

And then at the end, they'll go, also, God, my place flooded.

And maybe you can come and help me out with that.

Haven't I showed you how, that's mixing.

You let some judyizing something come into your life.

I'm there at midnight.

I'm not feeling particularly spiritual.

I'd buckle up all over me.

We're on VK.

And I'll tell her, I'm hanging out.

And I'll tell her, and I went, no, Jesus, you are good.

Jesus, you are solid.

You are stable and you're not relating to me based on my works.

You are relating to me based on the finished, completed, done work of the cross.

Do you believe that?

And I had to just do a reshift, Lord.

I am as qualified right now to receive answers to prayer as I would be if I was in the middle

of a mission strip and a simultaneous 40 day fast.

Amen.

Amen.

If you think differently, it's only because of emotions.

It's only because of the feelings and the thoughts swirling about in your own head.

And emotions go up and down.

You might wake up on a Wednesday and I don't feel like God is with me.

Because it's ugly and raining outside.

And somehow you think God, no.

His word doesn't change, amen.

And if you're looking to Jesus, you've not fallen from grace.

You don't fall from grace by slipping on a sinful banana peel.

You fall from grace when you make the decision to depart from grace and to allow mixture.

I keep using that word.

It's not because I made it up.

That's the cry of Galatians, no mixture, no mixture allowed.

Get them out of the same tent.

They can't even live under the same roof.

Verse 5.

Are we through the spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith?

Remember, how many of you are righteous right now?

And every hand will make me run around this place.

How many of you are righteous and have rights standing with God?

Let me see your hand.

You have it right now.

You are saved right now because faith says, I have it now.

Hope says, hope is great, but hope is in the future.

Hope is for tomorrow.

Now faith says, I have it now.

So you say, I believe in Jesus.

I believe that He died on the cross for my salvation.

You're saved now.

At the same time, it's in the future.

This is why Paul can say over and over again that the devil has been defeated, past tense.

But then in Romans, he says, and the God of peace will crush Satan shortly underneath your feet.

Kind of putting it in the future.

It's a contradiction in the Bible, which one is it?

The answer is yes.

It's both.

He has already delivered past tense you from the power of darkness.

But on that final day, when Satan will be cast into the lake of fire, that'll find its

apex, that'll find its complete fulfillment.

Amen.

Just like with our salvation, we're saved now.

We have righteousness now.

But on that day, we'll see the culmination of our salvation.

Hallelujah.

So that's why He says through the Spirit, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness

by faith.

It's both now and in the future.

For in Christ Jesus, verse six, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision

avails anything.

But faith working through love, faith working through love.

When you've ever received from the Lord, you know how you got it?

By faith.

Salvation.

You receive by faith.

Answers to prayer by faith.

Jesus was the ultimate faith preacher, preached a lot on faith everywhere He went.

It's like He had a faithometer and He would detect people's faith.

He had a faithometer.

It was in His own spirit.

Oh, you of little faith.

Oh, you great is your faith.

And some people, you don't want to hear Him say this, He said, where is your faith?

Not little, not great.

Not you.

I don't even.

Is this thing on?

And He would say, according to your faith, be it unto you in proportion to your.

So that means I want to have robust, strong faith because I will receive from heaven in

proportion to my faith.

How do I get an active, robust faith?

One thing that I'm allergic to is a lot of praying with nose, I've got to see results.

Prayer is not a time, especially group prayer where we just kind of all become social together

and let's have a little time with God and maybe perchance, maybe one out of 10 of the

things we ask for will get answered.

No, every one of those things should be answered.

So how do we get robust faith?

How does it work?

I'm so glad you asked.

I'm so glad the Apostle Paul answered, faith works by love.

Now, everything that we get, we see it through that filter, through that lens of the system

of law.

So typically you'll read something like this and you'll immediately put a works burden

on yourself.

You'll say, oh, I know what the Bible is saying.

It's saying that if I'm more loving to people, then my faith will work.

And maybe you've heard it even preached that way, is your faith now, are you tired?

Not getting answered to prayer?

Is your faith not working?

Try being nicer to people.

Love them.

Now 1-800, nice to people.

That's not what the scripture is talking about.

Faith works by love.

Your faith will work when you are receiving the love of God, love of God.

By the way, the byproduct of receiving the love of God besides robust faith is then you'll

have his love to give away.

And as a byproduct, you'll be kinder, you'll be gentler, you'll be more loving to all

the people that are in your life.

But here, the emphasis is on you, receiving mega doses of the love of God.

When you're really drinking of the love of God, your faith will be strong.

So chug, chug, chug, become a daily zipper.

Wake up in the morning, take a big chug of the love of God.

Right before breakfast, take a big chug of the love of God.

All throughout the day, chug, receive his love.

How do you do that?

I don't know.

What works for you?

I know what works for me.

You got to figure out, this is the part where we get into relationship.

You got to figure out how to dance with Jesus.

You got to figure out what works for you.

And here's the thing, so many people get stuck early on in the Christianity because they

don't know how to explore that.

How do I relate to him?

And they keep him at arm's length and they keep it all like clinical and distant and

artificial.

Get loose with him a little bit.

And so for me, one day, it might be reading the Psalms and I'm like, oh, I'll see

his love for me in the Psalms.

The next day, I might just wake up and pray tongues in the shower the whole time.

The next day, it could be that I'm just silent before him.

The next day or season, not literally a day, I'm erratic, but not that erratic.

There were seasons where I would just talk for hours a day and there were seasons where

I couldn't even say anything.

I didn't feel like I should.

I'd just be quiet.

I just think about his goodness.

Think about what he did for me on the cross.

Either way, get to a place and you have freedom.

You've been forgiven.

Get to a place where you're like a sponge and you know how to pull on the love of God.

All throughout the day, the enemy does not want you encountering the love of God on

the daily.

And NYC is not here to help.

I am convinced now, safe to say, there are parts of the country that are more conducive

to receiving God's love.

NYC is not high on the list.

Just I feel like you need to have the gladiator arm or sharpen your elbows and we all have

our defenses on.

Take a chill.

Just chill.

God's going to keep you safe.

You have to receive His love.

This isn't a choice.

If you don't, you're going to dry up and your faith will be, they'll always be like

a short circuit.

It won't be working.

So hallelujah.

Woman tend to receive the love of God quicker, easier.

Men we've been messed up.

We've heard wrong things and we've hardened up and men figure it out.

Talk to Him.

Yell at Him.

He's not offended.

Read the Psalms.

Half of them are people shouting at God.

True.

He's not scared of you.

He will show Himself loving and strong on your behalf.

Amen.

Next verse.

So faith works through love, receive His love, your faith will work.

Whenever I feel like my faith isn't working, that's the first place I go.

Am I really receiving the love of God?

And then I'll always notice, and all the dark periods of my life, they have the same thing

in common.

The same thing that's in common as I took my eyes off of His love for me.

And I made it about something else.

It could be so many other things.

So often it works mentality of performing for Him, trying to win His approval.

You fall in from grace.

You ran well, who hindered, that's a military, a strategic military term where they would

come in and break up the roads going in and out of a city to lay siege of the city.

He's saying, who did that to you?

You were on a road called grace and you allowed someone to destroy it and to prevent you,

to hinder you.

Who hindered you from obeying the truth?

The covenant mixers, the Judaizers.

It's usually not an outside group today, it's the voice of our own mind.

Verse 8, this persuasion, this persuasion to mix the two systems, to mix the two covenants,

to rely on yourself, to try to serve God in your own strength, to add to the finished

work of the cross.

This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you.

A little leaven, leavens the whole lump.

Mom, do you remember all that bread you made when I was a kid?

My mom was baking fresh bread before it was cool to bake fresh bread.

Before the hipsters were baking bread, and a little apartment in Forest Hills, Queens,

my mom was breaking fresh bread, and I come up to the kitchen counter and I'd look and

she'd take a little yeast, a little leaven, and it'll leaven the whole lump, the whole

loaf of bread.

And I used with the Apostle Paul is saying, a little law is too much, it'll mess up the

whole loaf of bread, but preachers love because they secretly don't trust you.

You know, I don't want you to get too uppity in your freedom, I'll lose control.

So I got to mix this great gospel of grace and freedom.

I got to remember, Emerald, bam, kick it up a notch, throw a little dash.

You know, I got to stop doing my like 90s and early 2000s, you know, as you get older,

your jokes don't progress, and so it loses 20 years goes by like this, and all the 30s

I was like, it's funny.

Preachers are notorious for salt and peppering.

Your teachings and churches with the system of law, really because we don't trust you.

We can get a lot more work and a lot more money out of you if we mix them law with it.

I'm saying the stuff I'm not supposed to say, you should be loving this.

It's not right, it's wrong, it leads to death, it leads to being estranged and divorced

from Christ, it leads to death and frustration inside of you.

Preachers, let me try to rephrase that, maybe I lost you with 11 analogy.

Try another way.

It's going to come out the same way, with me.

We feel that you're not to be trusted with really the freedom of grace and the liberty

of grace, so we try to temper God's amazing grace with some good old fashioned law.

You have to, you have to, you have to.

And that's what the old system of law is, thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt.

We read just the other week that the new covenant isn't about you, it's not about me.

The finger isn't wagging at you saying, thou shalt not, thou shalt not.

He when he establishes the new covenant says, I will form a new covenant with you.

I will take out the hardest stone.

I will put in a heart of flesh.

I want his, I will, not my you must.

I fail, he doesn't fail.

So what this is saying is, stay away from the 11.

You smell that system of law, get away.

Because a little will live in the whole lump.

And hopefully we try to present everything that way.

For example, Pastor James, he made an invitation for people to come and help with Christmas

decorating.

We want to see this whole place up, you know, like Radio City, back in the day.

And we really need some people to come and help.

Pastor Moe is going to have the high cocoa going and decorate this whole place up.

Do you notice how he presented that?

Let me not have even heard him because he just said, if you can, come.

He didn't say, how many of you love Jesus?

Give me a J, J, give me an E, get everybody hyped up, everybody love Jesus.

All right, now if you really love Jesus, you're going to come and show it and help decorate

it.

Everybody, pastor sign up, sheet up and down.

This stuff happens all the time to manipulate you, to guilt you, to extract something out

of you.

We're going to trust, here's a novel idea, we're going to trust the Holy Spirit inside

of you.

Ah, do you know our church is death-free?

Hallelujah, that's rare for churches.

And it's not because we're whipping people telling them that if they don't tie, they're

going to be cursed.

Hallelujah.

It's not like our church is death-free and we're in barely, but we have staff.

And we have numerous international missions projects that we give generously to.

Thankfully, in nearly 22 years, not once have I had to stand here and say, it's been a

bad year for Sidi Lai.

We may not be around unless, unless you reach into your pocket and dig real deep.

What are we doing?

We're trusting the Holy Spirit under the new covenant to speak to His people.

That means my primary job then is to make sure that you are full of the Word and full of

the Spirit so we can get the job done.

Amen.

Hallelujah, verse 10.

Is this helping you?

There's a lot of things I can teach and of course I have and I will, but I don't know

anything better to get you on the road to victory, to get you, here's a novel idea also,

to get you enjoying your salvation than a proper understanding of the finished work of the

cross and the new covenant of His grace.

I can't think of anything better.

And I didn't get it till I was a few years old in the Lord and I was simultaneously joyous

and very upset that they didn't tell me sooner.

Why didn't they tell me sooner?

Turns out they weren't hiding it from me.

They themselves didn't know.

They were victims of victims.

I have confidence in you, in the Lord.

You see how that throws that in?

It's like I have confidence in you, well really in the Lord, in you.

And if you have confidence in me, adjust that.

Have confidence in the Jesus in me.

Have confidence in the Jesus in you.

Have confidence in you in the Lord that you will have no other mind, but He who troubles

you shall bear His judgment, whoever He is.

Now the Bible says there is therefore now a little bit of condemnation to those who

are in Christ.

No condemnation, condemnation means judgment.

This was totally judged, totally condemned.

The wrath of God that you and I deserved, that wrath was exhausted on Jesus.

So is there any more condemnation and judgment left for the person who was in Christ?

No.

There is no more judgment, no more condemnation.

God cannot condemn you when He has already condemned your sin in Jesus.

Amen.

The whole story of the children of Israel fleeing Egypt and the past over lamb.

They were told to slay the first born lamb and apply the blood to the doorposts.

And when the death angel came, he would pass over the house with the blood.

Why?

Because death cannot come where death has already been.

Children cannot come to you where you have already been judged.

You have already been judged, but in the person of Jesus, you want to know what that judgment

looks like house of year.

Look at the Son of God, whipped, beaten, brutalized, pierced.

That was the judgment that we deserved.

And He was separated from God the Father on the cross.

That's really where the pain was, where He cried out, Eloi, Eloi, Lama, Sabaktini, my God,

my God, why have you forsaken me so that you would never be judged and God would never

turn us back on you and you would never be forsaken.

But yet here, Paul says to those who trouble you, there is a judgment.

Uh-huh.

This is important.

What's happening here?

Well, for the person who is in Christ, there is no condemnation.

But for those who are now mixing the covenants, the Bible says several things.

They're estranged or divorced from Jesus.

They have nullified the grace of God.

Being a longer qualify for no judgment.

For anyone who mixes the covenant, their fair game for the law and the law demands justice.

So He says to those covenant mixers who are bothering you, they're going to be judged

because they're not hidden away in Christ.

I think the proper response right now is just inwardly to go, thank you, Lord, I'm hidden

in Christ.

I receive your grace.

By your grace, I will continually live under the new covenant with no mixture.

Hallelujah.

It's just, it's so much hilarious because this is the only time where I feel like I have

to fight and wrestle with people to see them happier, more free, enjoying salvation.

And there are some folk who would get upset at this.

No, don't take the pain out of my Christianity.

Don't it's supposed to be hard.

All my life I've been on that treadmill, don't tell me I didn't have to be.

All that was for nothing.

Verse 11.

And I brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution?

Some of them were saying, Paul, we heard you got Timothy circumcised, so you are preaching

circumcision.

And that's true.

Paul took a young pastor Timothy and they were preaching to a bunch of Jewish people and

Timothy had to get circumcised because the Jews wouldn't receive him if he didn't.

So I imagine a conversation when something like Timothy, you sure you want to go on this

mission strip with me?

Yes, Paul, I really do.

How far are you prepared to go to fulfill the call of God on your life?

Because those folks over there, they're not going to hear words you say unless you get

circumcised.

Timothy said, you know, I'm prepared to go all the way.

So he got circumcised, but he didn't get circumcised to be approved unto God.

He didn't do something extra to get forgiven by God.

He just did this because it was a cultural thing and he was taught as Paul to be all things

to all men.

You see the difference?

It's always a question of motive.

Like we're going to go on a 21 day fast come the new year.

I haven't even gotten Christmas fat yet and I'm looking forward to it.

I can't wait for the 21 days of fasting.

We'll all be praying together every single night via Zoom meeting.

It's lovely time.

But with fasting, for example, so many Christians treat it like it's a hunger strike.

And if they suffer enough through fasting, they're going to twist God's arm into releasing

a blessing that normally he's just more keeping back from them.

Fasting doesn't change God.

It changes you.

It aligns you.

Hey, man, you see the difference in motivation.

Now we're fasting out of a love motive.

We're fasting not to change his mind.

We realize his mind is always good towards us.

We're fasting because it causes us to focus on him.

It causes us, our spirit to come alive.

Why do I still, why do they still want to kill me?

I actually preached circumcision.

He didn't.

Then the offense of the cross has ceased.

And then verse 12, the other week I joked and said, I love a little plaque for my desk

of one of Paul's quotes in an early chapter where he says, have I become your enemy?

Now that I tell you the truth, and I said it a kind of as a joke, and just this Friday

night, a precious couple from our church came and blessed me with that plaque.

And I love it.

And it's right now in my office on the desk.

But I thought after that, I thought, oh, I should have asked for this in the plaque.

This is the better verse.

This has maybe we'll just get a giant plaque when we get our own building.

We'll hang that in the men's restroom.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, put on your seatbelt.

Here's what Paul is saying.

Because his problem is covenant mixers, right?

Covenant mixers rob you of your liberty in Christ.

They rob you of your freedom.

They don't get you to receive the love of God.

They add to the finished work of the cross.

And here's what Paul is saying.

I could wish.

That's him being nice.

He didn't say I wish, but he's saying they drive me so crazy.

And they're so evil.

I could wish that those who trouble you, who want you circumcised, would even cut themselves

off.

Yes, he's talking about that.

Do you get what Paul is talking about, mom?

Sounds crazy, right?

Paul, the Holy Apostle Paul, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, said that.

Just to take away from that.

That this is serious.

Okay, some of you still don't get it.

He's saying that those people who like to just take a little off the top of your circumcision,

they should go all the way, chop, chop, chop, and emasculate themselves.

Can you believe that, bro?

That's what he's saying.

I know.

Pearl clutching right here in the third row.

Do you know who the Bible was written by?

You think it was written by a bunch of poets and cloistered seminarians, scholars?

Well, these were barbarians.

Actually Paul was the most academic of all of them.

Some of you men need to read that book, the barbarian way.

And realize that the gospel was spread and Christianity was formed really by poet warriors.

And by men who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty and be men.

And all that's trying to get squashed now and it's labeled as toxic masculinity, yet

men would be the first to run into a fire, first one to rescue a baby, first one to just

break, to get killed in wars, to advance the gospel, to have their own lives taken.

Don't shout me down because I'm preaching the truth.

Amen.

And sometimes under that a little bit of this comes out.

Amen.

Don't tune me out.

But he didn't really mean he said I could wish.

He tempered it.

Verse 13.

Everybody after serve is going to Google, did Paul really mean that?

Yeah, he did.

There's a lot of things theologians disagree about.

85% of them agree that that's what he was talking about.

The others wear ladies dresses.

Anyway, verse 5, chapter 5, verse 13.

For you, brethren, have been called to liberty.

Only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh.

Go through love, serve one another.

He's saying because grace, grace can be abused.

It doesn't mean it should be.

But only when you really love someone, only when you really give them your heart, only

when you really make yourself vulnerable, you now have lost power, huh?

That other person cannot really hurt you, but that's really what true love is.

And he's giving you himself and puts you under a system of grace.

You can't abuse it.

Should you?

He says, no, God forbid.

I'm allowed that grace now to have a working in you, to where you allow it to change you

and you become more like Jesus.

Hallelujah.

Verse 14.

Hey, on that note of grace changing you and making you more like Jesus, I've shared

before, I've offended my wife with that Paul thing and she's gone.

I'll make it up to you, babe.

Tonight we're going to read the song, a Solomon by the fireplace.

I didn't mean that in that way.

I literally meant, I didn't, come back.

I didn't, Pastor James, you're terrible.

I didn't mean it like that.

I will share it.

Listen.

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

Come back to me.

With transformation.

I've had the Lord when I first got saved some sins, just like fell off of me without any

effort.

Others persisted.

And then they were like deep hooks inside of me.

And obviously I still, obviously I still haven't arrived.

But I'm better.

I'm better with regard to holiness, better than when I'm where I once was.

The Lord is shaping me and molding me and changing me and you too.

But here's what I've noticed, no, especially the heavy sins, I mean by heavy, I mean heavy

for me, they persisted.

It's like I can't shake them off.

And then the Lord would deliver me.

And the hook would shh.

There's sins I thought I'd never be free of them, they're gone.

None of those ever came, those deliverances, they never came when I was trying to change.

Never.

They never came when I said, you know what, I really need to clean my act up.

Let me take a step back, quote unquote, work on myself.

And really, they always came when I put my eyes on Jesus, I fell in love with Him.

I was receiving His love.

I got caught up in the things of Jesus.

And then like weeks later it would hit me, wait, that sin that was planking me, it's

gone.

It's gone.

When did he do that?

It's gone.

He did that.

But I wasn't trying.

I was just receiving Jesus.

That's how it'll happen.

That's how it does happen.

That's why pastors' primary job is to get you to receive more of God's love and enjoy

Jesus.

And that's where the transformation comes.

For all the laws fulfilled in one word, even in this you shall love your neighbor as

yourself, verse 15.

But if you bite and devour one another, beware less to be consumed by one another.

I say then, and here he gives the entire key to the new covenant.

It's called walking in the Spirit.

I say then, walk in the Spirit.

Just say that with me, please, walk in the Spirit.

When you walk in the Spirit, you won't fulfill the desires of the flesh.

So how do you walk in the Spirit?

What does it mean to walk in the Spirit?

What does walk in the Spirit mean?

I was told walking in the Spirit means read your Bible every day, worship every day, come

to church that's walking in the Spirit.

That is not walking in the Spirit.

That is the fruit of walking in the Spirit.

But we're infamous for always analyzing the fruit never getting to the root.

Walking in the Spirit means living under grace.

It means following the Holy Spirit.

By the way, do you know what the Holy Spirit's job is?

What is primary job is?

Jesus said it in John 14, when he first talked about the Holy Spirit, he said, the Holy

Spirit will come and he will testify of me.

So the Holy Spirit's primary job, before being a helper, a comforter, the padaclato,

all that stuff, he always points the way to Jesus.

When the Holy Spirit comes, he says, look at Jesus.

This is what Jesus has done.

This is what Jesus brings.

To walk in the Spirit is to look at Jesus.

Take your eyes off of yourself, look at Jesus, cling to Jesus, basically live under grace.

To walk according to the flesh means you're walking in your own strength.

That's being under the old covenant system of the law.

So walking in the Spirit is walking in the new covenant, walk under grace.

When you're walking in the Spirit, then you won't fulfill the desires of the flesh.

The power of sin is broken under grace.

When you're under the system of the law, the power of sin is heated up and amplified.

That's why Paul said, not me, Paul said, the strength of sin is in the law.

You show me a church that's heavy on the system of the law and I will show you an army

of closet sinners, an army.

They're not that way on Sunday, come on, how are you doing?

Welcome.

And you won't see many relationships, many because they'll keep private because they don't

want anybody to know what they're secretly up to.

But can you believe there can be a new covenant church that doesn't downplay sin, that doesn't

compromise, I'm calling sin sin yet at the same time, we recognize that we're all works

of God in progress and we give you space to grow and develop and nobody's going to condemn

you, nobody's going to be mean to you, nobody's going to be harsh with you, but we understand

that we're all at different places ultimately going to the same destination, J-E-S-U-S.

Wow.

Sounds exceedingly new covenant churchy to me, hallelujah.

I say then walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh, verse 17,

for the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary

to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish, verse 18.

But if you are led by the spirit, you are not under the law, so to walk in the spirit means

you're not walking under the law, you're walking under grace, hallelujah.

Verse 19, now the works of the flesh are evident which are adultery, sex outside of the

marriage covenant, fornication, sex before marriage, uncleanness, ludeness, idolatry,

sorcery, sorcery and revelation is translated from the Greek pharmakia which is drug use

or we get pharmacy from, but here sorcery is actually witchcraft and do you know what all

these flavors of the flesh, all these works of the flesh have in common, nobody has to

teach them to you, they're in your flesh, thankfully your flesh has been crucified with

Christ if you will receive that an appropriated daily by faith.

But what this means is that you can take any group of people from any continent, any place,

you put them on a remote island and all of this stuff will come out of them, it's a murder,

I would never murder, yes that's, yes you would, just the environment wasn't right, but

it's there, that also means you can take a group of people, you put them on that island,

come back a hundred years and they're all practicing witchcraft.

Remember mom, when you first got saved, remember the reading the Turkish cups that you

put upside down, these are things no one had to teach my mom, this is stuff that was

just in our Balkan culture, did you, do they do that in my, they did, all the time right,

the Turkish cup of coffee is very muddy at the bottom, they flip it upside down and then

they would divine their future by looking at it, it looked like hieroglyphic images in

there, and it seems innocent, right, and playful, but you're really entering a realm that

God has an ordained for you to enter and you can open the door and give way to spirits

and it is witchcraft, my mom's not a witch, you can see she, I got my humor from her though,

what's my point, it's in the flesh, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions,

dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries and the like of which I tell

you beforehand, just as I also told you in time pass that those who practice such things

will not inherit the kingdom of God. He says the exact same thing, I believe in three,

possibly four different places where he'll do this, he'll list these flavors of the flesh

and he'll list these sins, and whenever I read the list, the mood in that atmosphere

just goes, shh, down, and never, you know, because you found yourself somewhere here,

if you didn't, you're not being totally honest, there's something that's off, so you go,

and I try not to look at any, I notice I'm looking at the floor as I read down the list,

no eye contact. Each time what he's saying is, what the supposition is, is that if you're

practicing, notice he says practicing, you're practicing, it's part of your life, it's habitual,

you don't even care, you're not even convicted, if that's you, then you're not saved.

If you're living like this, you're not saved, you may come to church, you may do churchy

things, but you need to really get saved, only when you get saved you actually hate sin.

Do you still sometimes have trouble with sin? Yeah, what's the solution, what's the antidote?

More of God's love, more of His grace, more of His goodness?

How long does it take? I don't know. He surprises me every time. Some things I thought

would be plaguing in my whole life, he got rid of. Some other things that seem easy on

paper, it's like that thing's still there. So so good, so so patient, so so merciful,

so loving. Verse 22, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, worship team,

come on up, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,

again such there is no law. And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with

its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit,

let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another, hallelujah.

I want you to just sing this next song, okay? I want to pray for you. I hope that you

will receive this invitation to walk down the path of grace and not mix and to allow

him to trust them enough to do a transformative work in you, to be Christ like is a pleasure,

to be Christ like is a joy. And the wages of sin is still death, but the way to overcome

sin is not by trying real hard, not by going to where you get flagged every Sunday by

a preacher is going to wave his index finger in your face. It's going to come from that

relationship with him. Father, teach us to enjoy salvation, teach us to enjoy Jesus, teach

us to be recipients of all that you purchased for us with your own blood. We love you, but

even more importantly, we receive your love for us. Amen.

This is the City Light Church podcast. If you've missed any part of today's message or

if you would like to find out more about Pastor Boyan Jansik in City Light Church, visit

us at citylightnyc.com. That's citylightnyc.com. Feel free to visit us online or in person

anytime. We would love to connect with you. We pray that you have been encouraged today,

that you have been reminded how much God loves you, and that you are surrounded by grace.

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