Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: 3:1-6

Housekeeping Stuff & Announcements:

Welcome guests to the family gathering, introduce yourself.

Thank the band and Alvin.

Thank Joe for filling in for the past two weeks.

Invite guests to parlor after service.

We are hosting two events on back-to-back weekends for women:

Aspire Women’s Conference, an evening full of laughter, learning, stories & music.

This is the third year that we have hosted Shine.

Aspire is next Friday, September 13, from 7 to 10 pm.

You can get tickets in the church office, or online at aspirewomensevents.com.

I also believe they will be available at the door.

Flyers are available in the foyer on the Get Connected Table.

In September, we are hosting two events on back-to-back weekends for women:Aspire Women’s Conference, an evening full of laughter, learning, stories & music.

This is the third year that we have hosted Shine.

This year, it will be on Friday, September 13, from 7 to 10 pm.

You can get tickets in the church office, or online at aspirewomensevents.com.

Flyers are available in the foyer on the Get Connected Table.

The REAL Women’s Conference will be held the following weekend, September 20 and 21, from 6-9 on Friday night, and 8:15 to 3 on Saturday.

This two-day conference is intended to encourage, inspire, and equip women to shift their focus from “Why is this happening?”

to “I wonder what God is working through this?”

You can get more information in at getrealwithgod.com,

and cards are also available on the Get Connected Table.

Tonight at 6:30 following our evening service in Miller Hall, Carol Smith will be sharing about her missions work in Russia at Adults on Mission.

This Tuesday, September 10, the church offices will be closed for our staff calendaring retreat.

Next Sunday night at 5:30 will be our bi-monthly business meeting here in the sanctuary.

Members, please plan to be here next Sunday evening.

One thing that we will be voting on will be whether to ordain Chuck Crisler as a deacon.

VIDEO TESTIMONY.

Opening

Pray

We’re nearing the halfway point through a series through the book of Galatians that we’re calling “Dear Church.”

In Galatians, I believe that the Apostle Paul is writing to the churches that he founded when he and Barnabas took their first mission trip, during which they visited Antioch of Pisidia, then Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe in the Roman province of Galatia.

This mission trip probably took place around 47 AD.

As we have seen so far in our series, some false teachers had come in and had started saying that in order to truly be saved, one needed to follow the Jewish law in addition to believing in Christ.

Jesus alone wasn’t enough.

And some of the Galatians were buying this false message, this “other gospel” that was no gospel at all.

Paul argued that following the rules doesn’t save, and as we saw in my last message, he presented and defended the doctrine of justification by faith alone.

And we defined justification as “the gracious act of God by which God declares a sinner righteous solely through faith in Jesus Christ.”

This definition is something we’re going to need to keep in mind throughout the rest of our study of Galatians, so I’ll most likely be bringing it up every week for a while.

This definition is something we’re going to need to keep in mind throughout the rest of our study of Galatians, so I’ll most likely be bringing it up every week for a while.

To this point in Paul’s letter, he’s been giving a little bit of an autobiography in order to make his point about justification.

Now he shifts back into addressing the “Galatian Situation” directly, and he does so in kind of a harsh fashion:

Paul calls the Galatians “foolish,” a word describing someone who lacks understanding.

Paul uses the term twice: here and then again in verse 3. He’s not insulting their intelligence.

He’s criticizing their lack of spiritual discernment.

They were making choices that made no sense, and were willingly submitting to being deceived.

This is what the Judaizers had done.

They had come in with a false message, one meant to deceive the Galatians, and they Galatians lacked discernment to know what was true and what wasn’t.

They were, at least as far as this situation was concerned, spiritually foolish.

When Paul here asks “Who has cast a spell on you,” he’s not talking about some wizard coming in with his wand and befuddling the Galatians or anything of the sort, but that someone has come in with ill intent with a false message, intending to captivate and in some way enchant the Galatians away from a pure devotion to Christ through faith.

The “who” here in the Greek is singular, which may allude to the idea that it is the devil himself who has come in and attempted to bewitch the Galatians into legalism and self-reliance, which would thus make them ineffective.

Christian brother and sister, understand that the deceiver has no ability to take away your salvation… but if he can get you to trust in something other than the gospel of Jesus Christ, he can make your faith, your life, and your witness ineffective.

This is the best he can do: he can’t keep you from heaven, but he can keep you from being useful in telling others how to find hope if he can get you to add anything to or take anything away from the gospel.

This is what was happening in Galatia.

Paul’s message for the rest of chapter 3 and into chapter 4 of Galatians is to some extent a reflection on or a reminder about the message that he had first preached in Galatia.

Assuming that my position is correct, and that Paul is writing to the churches that he and Barnabas founded on their first missionary journey, we must take a moment and look at parts of and 14 to understand what Paul means when he says here “before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.”

In Acts chapter 13, we find the beginnings of this missionary journey, and in verse 14, we find Paul and Barnabas in Antioch of Pisidia.

Pisidian Antioch had enough Hebrew people (a minimum of ten Hebrew men) to have a synagogue built, and in Antioch there were apparently a good number of Jewish converts (or at least God-fearing Gentiles) who attended synagogue gatherings, as we will see in a moment.

Paul and Barnabas were invited to share in the synagogue gathering.

Pisidian Antioch had enough Hebrew people (a minimum of ten Hebrew men) to have a synagogue built, and in Antioch there were apparently a good number of Jewish converts (or at least God-fearing Gentiles) who attended synagogue gatherings.

Paul and Barnabas were invited to share in the synagogue gathering, and Paul speaks.

He builds a picture for those in the synagogue of Israel’s history in God’s plan of salvation from their captivity in Egypt to David.

Then he clearly says to them that Jesus is the Savior that Israel has been promised:

He explains Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection to them:

acts 13:28-

And then he explains about justification by faith in Christ:

acts 13:

Following this, some trouble arose with the Jews, and Paul and Barnabas begin to focus on the Gentiles, and the message of the gospel begins to spread.

People are coming to faith in Christ, and the evidence of their faith is shown in the fact that they are filled with the Holy Spirit:

acts

In Iconium, the same thing happens.

They preach the message of the Gospel in the synagogue, and people come to faith, and they stay there for a while, and God does miraculous works through them:

Acts 14:

They leave Iconium and go to Lystra, where through Paul God miraculously heals a lame man who had never walked.

The Jews from Antioch and Iconium come down and turn the people of Lystra against Paul and Barnabas, and Paul is nearly killed.

They then travel to Derbe, and there made many disciples.

The point is that everywhere Paul and Barnabas went, they preached the Gospel.

Even in Paul’s first message in the synagogue in Antioch, he spoke about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

By the Holy Spirit, God enabled Paul and Barnabas to perform miraculous works.

And God used this ministry of Paul and Barnabas to draw people to Himself and save them.

So back in , Paul’s is reminding them of when the came to faith, and how they came to faith, and whom they had placed their faith in:

It has been said that “the universe of Paul’s thought revolved around the Son of God, Jesus Christ.”

This is true.

Paul was sold out for the Gospel, and the message of the Gospel is Jesus.

Jesus really came and really lived perfectly and really died sacrificially and really rose again and really is coming again.

The message of the Gospel: Jesus Christ crucified… is not first and foremost a message about how to live, but about what God has done for us at the cross of Christ.

It’s a declaration of the love of God for us, and it’s through faith that we receive that love that God poured out in Christ.

Next, Paul reminds them that it was “before [their] eyes [that] Jesus Christ was publically portrayed as crucified.”

When He preached the message of the Gospel, he had vividly shared with them the truth of Jesus’ suffering and death.

They had understood and believed it.

What had gone wrong that they had started believing that Jesus alone was no longer enough, when they had heard and understood so clearly?

To illustrate what was going on, Paul then masterfully goes into some rapid-fire questions to prompt the Galatians to think about what was happening.

We’re going to see in these questions several contrasts, and they are contrasts that we must consider for our own lives as well:

Paul asks the question that should settle the whole dispute: when had the believers in Galatia received the Spirit?

This is the first time in Galatians that Paul references the Holy Spirit.

But Paul’s theology of the Holy Spirit and His connection to salvation is crucial:

When they worked hard enough to earn His presence, or when they believed the Gospel?

And the answer is assumed, because Paul was there.