Untitled Sermon (5)

Introduction

Well as we begin this week, I should probably begin by admitting a fault of my own that I know I have when I preach.

I have this issue with coming to a text and finding such marvel and mystery inside of the passage that I then begin to camp out on the text.

Which isn’t necessarily always a bad thing but for me at times it most certainly can be.

With that said I do plan on making it further into the message today than just into the first verse.

But keep in mind, I said I plan to.

I’m not however making any promises just an attempt to try :)

My wife did however remind me that many people in the Church would probably like to get through the first chapter before the Lord calls them home…:)

Well please turn with me in your Bible’s to and we will read through verse 9 today.

Authorized Version Chapter 1

1 Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;) 2 And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: 5 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

Pray

Now it will be my intention today to make our way through verse 5 but there is a lot of content to cover so that is not likely to happen.

When we left off last week we were discussing the importance of Paul’s introductions and how important and vital it is for the Galatian Church to take heed to the authority given to the Apostle Paul.

However we didn’t fully establish why that was so important.

At least in my mind it wasn’t made particularly clear anyway.

Well if you recall we talked about how the date impacted the Galatians in what Bible they would have had.

And it was established that due to the early nature there would have been no Bible that contained the New Testament Canon of Scripture.

If anything they would have had the Old Testament but even it was probably not in a full set as the price of scrolls in the first century was not cheap.

And it was because of this that we find Paul so completely blown away with the mindset of the Galatians.

The fact that Paul had brought them such wonderful news concerning the Lord’s redemptive plan of the Gospel and the Galatians were rejecting Paul’s teachings for that which was brought unto them.

As Paul so clearly states it, another gospel, not that there is another gospel but one made up in the minds of the people.

And the whole emphasis last week was just how dependent upon the words of the Apostles that the early Church really was.

It wasn’t that these men were infallible men in any way.

It wasn’t that these men had finally on their own account come to a greater knowledge of the truth.

It was that God used the Apostles as those who firmly established the foundations of the New Covenant Church.

And anyone in here who has ever had even a small amount of construction experience knows that the foundation of the building is crucial.

Without the firm foundation, things very quickly will begin to fall apart.

And for the Church that would be a disaster.

Even in the world of construction this is often times fatal for many.

Let me give you an example.

In the early days of the first century, the Roman emperor Tiberius had placed a ban on gladiator games for the general public.

Well after a period of time, the ban was lifted and auditoriums began popping up all over the place.

One in particular that was built was constructed by a young entrepreneur by the name of Atillius.

And young Atillius took the time and put together this massive amphitheater that would hold approximately 50,000 people.

And when the ban was lifted in 27 AD, the people began flocking to these amphitheater’s to see the shows that were being put on.

Shortly into the entertainment for the night, the structure gave way killing in excess of 20,000 people.

It was said to be one of the largest death tolls that resulted from the collapse of a stadium.

The Roman response to this horrible incident was that from that time forward, every stadium or venue had to be built upon a solid foundation and inspected for the sureness of it’s stability.

You see what had happened was that the ground below this stadium never had a solid foundation.

And because of it’s shaky nature, the ground gave way taking the lives of at least 20,000 people and injuring a vast majority of the total people there.

Some 50,000 people.

Are you hearing me?

I used to be a union Ironworker and as an Ironworker, I many times stood on top of a building in it’s steel frame stage at heights that are beyond most mens comfort level.

And I can tell you just as sure as the day is the Lord’s day that those buildings required a foundation that would have the ability to support the great heights that they were at.

Some 50,000 people in the blink of an eye either had their lives taken from them or their life drastically altered due to a faulty foundation.

Wow how that same thing could utterly destroy the Church today.

Just think of how that applies to the Church today.

The Church is made up of millions of believers all across the globe if you look at the Church Universal.

This body alone is averaging around 80-90.

If we inspected the foundations of the Church within the Evangelical world today, the result would cause most of the Church’s to close it’s doors before it killed the souls of the people inside.

The surety of the foundation and the inspection for soundness within the Church today would reap results that would cause most church’s to close their doors!

That’s just reality.

Many Church’s today would claim to have the Gospel but in reality they have another Gospel.

Not the true Gospel from the Apostles as set out by the Lord Jesus Christ.

But a gospel that is lacking in it’s surety of it’s foundation.

A foundation which is crucial and whether they realize it or not, has in many ways already collapsed and has left devestation in it’s wake.

Now lest we get to high and mighty of ourselves, we should probably look in the mirror and realize that we very likely could be in that numbered lot.

Now I don’t mean that in a harsh way and I’m not pointing to one individual in particular or even the whole Church.

But there is an ever present reality here that says that the Church is made up of born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and we still make mistakes.

Each and everyone of us sinned multiple times before we even got to Church this morning.

That’s not even counting the things we’ve thought since we got here!

And as a body made up of fallible people, we have the ability to make major mistakes.

I mean look at the Galatian Church, they had an Apostle among them and as soon as he went away, they departed from his teachings.

They departed from the very foundations that Paul laid within that body!

This was why it was so vital for the Galatians to listen to what the Apostle Paul had taught them.

They had no New Testament and that meant that the foundations that had been laid by Paul were vital to the building up of the Church.

The words that Paul gave them in his teachings were to be treated with the upmost respect and given the utmost authority.

However, inside of that, the vital nature of the Galatian Church listening to Paul was not addressed.

Now just in case we somehow transfer that same thought process into the Church today, we need to understand that we have the Word of God right here.

We have the Word of God which is the sure foundation!

It was laid by Christ through the Apostles many years ago.

We have no need for someone to be given divine Apostleship within the Church.

The foundation of the Church was laid by the Apostles which we now have this day in the Word of God.

And since this topic could very well be a struggle for many within this room, let’s just lay it out here while we can.

The role of the God ordained man today within the Church is far different from that of the beginning of the Church.

Paul and the other Apostles spoke with divine authority.

Giving a message to the Church in a broken period of time that had a desperate need for the Lord to lay that foundation.

So that Elder that rules over the Church today isn’t receiving new revelation from God for the Church.

Instead he is to labor to bring to light the foundation that has already been laid.

He has the Word of God that he brings about from the pulpit.

He declares the very same thing once given by the Apostles.

He doesn’t declare anything new to the Church today.

He doesn’t need to seek out for new truth in other shapes and forms.

He has the Word delivered.

He does speak with authority but not the same authority as what the Apostles had.

If what the elders of this Church say cannot be found within the historical understanding of Scripture, it carries zero authority.

The authority given to the Elder of the Church today is not given outside of the realm of Scripture.

And therefore the only weight that his words carry comes from how faithful they are to the text of Scripture.

And the day that things are being done and being said that are not grounded in the foundation of Scripture, that sure and true foundation has collapsed.

And those who are inside are at a vital risk.

Their souls, their livelihoods, their relationships and their marriages have been put in jeopardy.

Scattered along the road within this congregation you will find this.

People who have had their hearts broken, time and time again.

They’ve had their conscious bound over something that Scripture never speaks on.

They have cast aside their livelihoods for a reason they thought was most righteous before the Lord.

Not that those things and those actions were not honorable to God, it’s just that they were never commanded.

The house was built upon a foundation that carried a misunderstanding about the hearts of man.

The fact that those hearts cannot be guided by anything outside of the work of the Lord.

That guilt within the Christian life is not designed to drive you toward action but is designed by God to draw you nearer to Him.

Nearer to Him through repentance where sin may truly lye and a casting off of self and a putting on of Christ.

Paul’s purpose in writing to the Galatians had nothing to do with chastising the Galatian Church.

But it had everything to do with causing them to see who they truly were in Christ.

Because when a Christian truly recognizes who they are in Christ, this striving for external things is done away with.

This striving for having the perfect external attitude and perception is done away with.

And the Christian then has the absolute joy of sitting back and basking in the free gift of Christ.

Now I should clarify here real quick what I am saying as I don’t want you to hear the wrong thing.

I am not saying that once you get saved, it’s your joy to sit back and do nothing.

To not strive after holiness.

That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

It’s that your actions need to be done for the right reasons.

They need to be done because your heart seeks after glorifying Christ and bringing upon Him the glory that is due Him.

That is a far cry different from what the Galatians were dealing with.

And this reality becomes ever so prominent as Paul continues on through this introduction.

Look with me for a second at the grammatical construct of how this verse is laid out.

Grace be to you, and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even the way that Paul lays out this grace and peace shows that these joys come only from the Lord.

There is nothing that the person must do to receive it.

Notice that Paul uses the word from.

These blessings, this grace and this peace come from God the Father.

From the Lord Jesus Christ.

The grace and peace from God are simply that.

They cannot be earned, they cannot be demanded.

They are not elements laid out in a race so that you may grab hold of them after you have finally reached the finish line.

They are from God and cannot be worked after.

And what Paul is wanting to illustrate here once again falls back on the mindset of our human nature.

His desire is to point to God’s unconditional good will toward mankind.

And this good will is found in the saving work of Christ.

The peace that Paul is seeking to show here is the type that at the end of the day, the person is not bound by guilt nor sorrow.

Instead they have the unique ability to live in the peace given from God as a state of life.

Though they may struggle and fall into the temptations such as they had with the Judiazers.

Though they may at the end of the day seem as though they crashed up against the reef of God’s wrath.

They should know that through Christ, they live at peace with God.

And it’s in this way that the introduction from Paul is really no different from that of his other letters.

Paul is reiterating what he told to the Roman Church in .

That since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And peace with God means just that.

This is not some mindset of a subjective feeling of peace, although that is a byproduct and we’ll address that.

Paul is speaking of an objective fact.

A fact which states that man has been made right before the Lord.

The justified person is no longer tormented by questions of his standing before God.

Though he be a sinner, peace has been bestowed upon him because of what God has done for him.

Beloved, let me stop here for a minute.

What has been burdening your conscience?

You!

You as an individual, what has been the burden upon your soul?

Is it about the goodness and merit found within yourself?

You who have sat in this Church for years on end.

You know the right answers to every theological question.

You could probably recite more Scripture than many of the greatest preachers.

Yet how is your conscious?

Is it burdened and without peace?

Is it burdened about all the ways in which day in and day out you come up short before the Lord?

Is it that within this last week you fell short of a standard you had set for yourself?

Maybe it’s that you set the Moral Law of God before you and you fight and struggle each day to walk the lines of that Law, yet you have no peace.

You live each day striving after obedience and at the end of the day, you check off all the 10 Commandments you didn’t break.

At the same time, feeling a need to crucify your flesh before the Lord.

Beloved, there will be no peace found there.

The peace from God that is given here is not a peace that you can have apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

In order to know this peace, the Lord must know you!

You must have been bought by the precious work of Christ with your name forever entered into eternity with Him.

You must have as an individual been bought by Christ through His death, burial and resurrection.

That is why Paul so emphatically lays out this peace coming from the Lord.

Now lest someone misunderstand me here, I am in no way downgrading your need for sanctification.

Beloved I am in no way downgrading your need for sanctification.

Nor is what I’m getting ready to tell you being said so that it goes against your need to honor God through your actions and your obedience.

But instead, you are to strive in your days seeking after glorifying God by living your life His way.

Yet at the end of the day, nothing you did adds one iota to your redemption.

The peace and the mercy of God comes upon you irregardless of the countless many ways you may have fallen short this year.

This month or even this very day.

Beloved, if you could see the beauty of what Jesus Christ the righteous judge did for you, you’d fall down in amazement before His throne.

And you would rest day in and day out knowing that you have the ability to fall back into His arms.

And every ounce of anxiety about who you are in Christ would be cast asunder.

He was the one who bore the wrath of God over sin and He did so in order to give you peace.

Peace with God the Father.

Now I assure you that there are those who will hear this message who have no peace from the Lord.

In their hearts they are still warring against Him and He after them.

And those people will not be able to know what peace truly looks like.

They will live out their days in either complete rejection of the Lord.

Or they will live out their days unwilling to give up the things of this world.

Many of them will go about their lives trying as they may to serve two masters.

And in doing so they shall have no peace with God.

Not until the day that they bow before the Lord Jesus Christ and see that He is the Lord over their life whether they want it or not.

And on that beautiful day, they will look upon the works of their heart whether done with malice intentions or done with good intentions and they will see it as being absolutely worthless.

You see the Christ that we know isn’t sitting in some corner in heaven tucked away in shame.

Instead the Lord Jesus Christ is Exalted in the Heavenly where he wears a heavenly humanity.

A life giving Spirit ready to give peace to those who belong to Him.

Ready to give this life changing peace with God.

Yet for those whom He does not know, there will be no peace.

There will be no solace in all the good things they thought they had done.

They will be those people who did not build their faith upon the solid foundation of .

And on that day the Lord will say turn from me for I never knew you!

Beloved are you the wise man who built his house upon the Rock?

Or is your life built upon a foundation that could easily collapse?

Now this foolish Galatian Church

I can assure you of this, there will come a day when the veil of your heart is torn in two and what is inside of it will be clearly known.

Now I want to add here as it is most assuredly necessary.

There will be many people who wrestle with whether or not they have been bought by Christ.

Because in the depths of their hearts they are unsure of the peace that was bestowed upon them.

Whether it’s because of bad teachings.

False doctrines or even dogmas applied to their lives.

This internal struggle either will or has been very real for you.

Yet you should know, that this peace that Paul is referring to here in not subjective.

It’s not something laid out as an emotional feeling that you may have.

Although it may very well be emotional for some, for others that might not be the case.

For others that sense of peace is purely an objective fact that has transpired in heaven and you may wrestle with it until you’re called home.

Yet I tell you just as a comfort, the very fact that you’re struggling with whether you have been made right with God is a good indicator of where your soul is.

You see the natural man has no desire for God.

They have no longing after or a thirst of His true righteousness.

They serve the creature rather than the Creator.

Should the subject of the reality of the Lord be brought up with them they have no ears for it.

They have built their house upon sinking sand with no hope of a true foundation.

And when you couple this with Paul’s analogy of spiritual fruit later on in Galatians, you’ll see that there is a way to mend the emotional side of this.

The Objective is a fact that never changes.

Something along the lines of Objective Truth.

It stands the test of time because of where it comes from.

But our emotions are subjective which means that each individual will be different.

And today’s emotions might be great while tomorrow’s leave you wondering if there is even any care from the Lord for you.

Beloved, let me assure you, that regardless of the emotions that might be running through your mind, your eternal state will never change.

Once it is set in stone by the Lord, it is forever affixed into eternity with Him.

And though the day may feel long and full of sorrows, trials and doubts about who you are in Christ.

Know that this peace is the full justification before God on your behalf from the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the message that Paul was conveying to the Galatians just in his introduction.

They had started out so well in their race and yet were hindered by trying seek out their own peace with God.

Remember they were the ones who felt as though they needed to add to Christ’ work.

They were the ones who by their own admission and denial of the freeness of the Gospel were trying to entice others into the same system.

But by Paul emphasizing here the Greek word Charis for the word grace.

He was showing them even with the very language that he used that what they had been teaching was wrong.

Paul uses the Greek word for grace over 100 times in all of his writings of the New Testament.

For Paul this idea of the word Grace encapsulates the attitude and activity of God as expressed in the Gospel.

It shows God’s reaching out, redeeming and sustaining concern for fallen humanity.

You see the word used there depicts a person’s unworthiness in receiving merit.

We find the same word in the Septuigant which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament in .

Listen to it’s use here, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness...”

It goes on for some time there and I’d encourage you to go back and read the context of that verse.

Because as you do, you’d find that what God was doing was bestowing upon a people an unmerited favor.

No matter where you go in the Bible, you cannot find a passage of Scripture that shows where grace is a merited favor.

Not in the sense of salvation.

And this has been known and agreed about within the Orthodox Evangelical Church for countless years.

Listen to what Richard Sibbs said about Grace:

Feathers for Arrows Position—No Barrier to Grace

GRACE makes itself equally at home in the palace and the cottage. No condition necessitates its absence, no position precludes its flourishing. One may compare it in its power to live and blossom in all places to the beautiful blue-bell of Scotland, of which the poetess sings:—

“No rock is too high, no vale too low,

For its fragile and tremulous form to grow:

It crowns the mountain

With azure bells,

And decks the fountain

In forest dells.

It wreathes the ruin with clusters grey,

Bowing and smiling the livelong day.”

300 Quotations for Preachers from the Puritans By Grace Comes Justification and Sanctification

Grace gives a Christian his form and being, his work and his working, for all working is from the inward being and form of things. By grace we are what we are in justification, and work what we work in sanctification.

This Grace and Peace is in no way reflective of the individual.

Nor is it reflective of the Church but is wholly bound to the one who gave Himself for our sins.

To deliver us from the present evil age.

You know you won’t hear me know

So this language that’s used here by Paul, is laid out in such a way as to take all boasting off of the shoulders of the Galatians.

Paul is speaking to them in such a way that there is a build up that introduces a glorious Christ.

A glorious Christ who without measure has in and of Himself worked in the lives of His people.

Now I’m not sure that I want to go much farther here as getting into verses 4-5 opens up another sermon altogether.

So as we end this day, I want to ask you some questions to reflect on until next week.

Have you through all this time been working and striving towards adding to the Gospel?

Draw chart again.

Have you in your own way grown tired and begun adding to the work of Christ?

And regardless of if you have or not, I implore you to stop.

To look at Christ and realize that He is to be made much of.

That these things that you have added here are not designed to be there.

That this work from the very start all the way through until the end is wholly of Christ alone.

That when He bestowed upon you the work of His redemption.

He did so not because you deserved it.

Not because you were born into a good family or that you lived a good life.

But because He has a love for His bride that is without comparison.

And it was and is because of that great love that he took the punishment that you deserved for your sin.

And in doing so, Christ made you right before the Father.

Right in such a way that there is now peace between you and God.

So today, magnify the Cross of Christ.

Make much of Christ and leave your additions at the foot of the cross.

For the Lord of all creation has no need of them.

Would you pray with me.

Pray.