Galatians 6:11-16A

Introduction

As we begin to look at this portion of Galatians, we’re going to look at this week and then two weeks from today we will look at verse 16 by itself.

The reason for that is that next week, I’m going to preach on the extent of the Atonement of Christ.

Which will be followed up by me pleading my case for why the Church and Israel are one in the same per Scripture.

Now I realize that many may have disagreements when we get to that passage of Scripture about the Church and Israel being the same but please know this, it is not an issue to be divided over.

I’ll plead my case and then you can either agree with me or be wrong :)

Well with those spoilers in mind, please turn with me to as begin to look at our text this morning.

Read and Pray.

Question: What are you proud of?

As an individual, as a family, as a Christian, what is it that you’re proud of?

Argue that what we’re normally proud of… Our Kids, Our Homes, some antique that we have… (Me on Bunyans Works).

What we’re proud of always finds a way into our conversations.

Even I as your perfect pastor do this as well…lol

Part of our fallen nature is that we boast in something, we’ve got this whole in our relationship with God and we try to fill it with the approval of others.

We boast so that others may give their approval of our lives, our stuff, our life.

2. As Christians, our boasting or our pride should not be found in those things.

Our boasting is not found in external possessions.

It is not found in who we know that is famous.

It is not found in how others view us.

3. This ultimately was the problem within the hearts of the Judiazers in Galatia.

Look at V.12. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ.

Let’s look at that verse in two phases.

4. The Judiazers had a desire to make a good showing in the flesh.

Think about what Paul is saying here in light of .

Matthew 23:15 ESV

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Why in the world would Jesus say something like this to these Scribes and Pharisees? Wouldn’t God want these people to be brought into the household of God?

The issue was that the Scribes and the Pharisees wouldn’t truly point people to God. They would teach them to be moral people, but they’d fail at pointing them to God.

In the first century, there were two types of Proselytes.

Proselytes of Righteousness and Proselytes of the Gate.

Those of righteousness were those who not only submitted to the ordinances of the Mosaic Law, but they were also circumcised. This revealed their dedication if you will to the teachings of Judaism.

Acts 2:10 ESV

Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome,

You see this in where Luke records those who waited around in Jerusalem as Jews in verse 5 and clarifies in verse 10 that some were born outside of Judaism.

Then you had the not so clean ones. Those Proselytes of the Gate.

These were the people who desired to worship God. They desired to glorify God but they fell short of actually qualifying because they hadn’t been circumcised.

Cornelius in would be a great example of this type of person. Listen to how Cornelius is described in Scripture by Luke.

Acts 10:1

Acts 10:1–2 ESV

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.

He, according to Scripture was a righteous man.

The characteristics that should fit with a believer in the Lord are listed right there. He Feared God, instructed his home in the same way, cared little about his own benefit in this world by sacrificially giving to the Lord, and was steadfast in prayer!

Yet, which one of these groups of people do you think the Jews of the first century would have boasted in?

They would have boasted in that person who was a “full” Proselyte.

The Jew focused on the external of the person and not the internal.

Luke 18:10-13

gives us a wonderful portrait of this.

(Stop at Verse 13, God be merciful to me a sinner.)

Luke 18:10–13 ESV

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Luke 18:10–14 ESV

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Luke 18:10-

This was Judaism in the first century! This is how the Pharisees viewed themselves.

God I thank you that I am better than everyone else around me! I am too good to be an extortioner, I am too good to be unjust, I am too good to be an adulterer, I am also too good to be like this vile creature sitting next to me.

Lord, you know of my righteousness and I am so grateful that you approve of who I am and how good I am!

Can you imagine for one moment, someone standing before the most righteous King over all of Creation, the Lord who is perfect and pure, and then exalting themselves?

I would argue in many ways, we, 2000 years later, do the same thing.

We look at Christians and we automatically begin to examine the external instead of the internal.

We look at where the person is at today without looking at where they’ve come from.

Not that we shouldn’t look at Christians and begin this process of helping one another draw closer to Christ. But instead we do so sincerely desiring to help them grow closer to Christ and not closer on the outside.

When you change the outside, nothing on the inside changes. Yet when you help one another change the inside, the outside will begin to change.

Have you ever wondered why tells us to remove the Log out of our own eye before we grab the speck out of theirs? Its because it is our nature to be just like the pharisees.

We’d love to have a humongous Church with people who by all appearances appear to be God fearers, yet do we ever wonder about their hearts?

As a pastor, I’d rather have 1 person to disciple with a heart set upon glorifying Christ and drawing nearer to Him than 1000 who look like they care. And to be honest, I think that was Jesus’ position as well!

The truth is, throughout history, God’s people have often repeated the same mistake. They have de-elevated religion of the heart into a superficial, outward show, and God has repeatedly sent His messengers to reprove, rebuke and correct them back towards an inward religion.

May this not be what people think of when they think of Kirkwood Baptist Church.

May all of Star City come to know this body of believers as a people who care about the hearts of men and not the externals.

So why did these people want to make a good showing?

5. The Judiazers wanted to avoid persecution from the Jews.

The truth is, the cross of Christ angers people! It stirs up their hearts so that they desire to persecute those who preach Christ.

To say that Christ died on the cross for sinners impugns the character of people. It implies that which they believe about themselves isn’t true.

All people believe themselves to be good, though they have a few mishaps, they are overall good. Yet the cross mandates they see themselves as deplorable before a Holy God.

What the cross tells us about ourselves is unpalatable, yet its true! We are rebellious sinners before a holy and righteous God and left to our own demise, we would forever run from Him!

Not only can we not redeem ourselves, we wouldn’t want to.

John Stott says it this way;

“Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’ Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”

John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians: Only One Way, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 179.

And because men see the preaching of the cross in this way, it produces anger, bitterness, resentment and persecution.

This idea of an internal issue within our hearts, one that could only be fixed by Grace alone, through Faith alone in Christ alone is exactly what the Judiazers were trying to avoid.

Instead they wanted people to beat on their chest and say thank you Lord that I am not like that filthy tax collector.

They wanted an external religion.

The issue though is that from the very beginning of creation, this relationship with God has always been about the heart. Yes there were external mandates but many of them were there to point the heart to God.

That brings us to the heart of todays text and it is this, Christianity has always been about the divine and how He impacts the heart, not about the external and what those who claim the name of Jesus do!

6. That’s why Paul in Verse 15 points to obedience to the Law as being worthless.

Look at the passage. What does he say matters?

Being a new creation.

Yes when we see a brother in Christ stumbling along in some sin that Scripture actually speaks on, we go to them as an encouragement.

But we should also remember that there are Christians who do and see things far different from you!

There are even many Christians who will trod along and spend a season of their life in something that we might believe to be sin.

Now what I’m about to say could be misconstrued if someone has not listened to me about the call to holiness in a believers life so please hear this in context of all that has been said.

Yet at the end of the day, the external actions or inactions, circumcision or uncircumcision are not how we look at one another to see the truthfulness of the faith.

Instead we look for the new creation!

And its because of this that each of us in this room quite literally have no room to boast. We have no room for boasting.

Each of us are called to examine our hearts to make sure that when we stand before the Lord, we ourselves like that tax collector.

Lord be merciful to me, a sinner!