Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Galatians Recap

*Galatians were distorting the true Gospel of Christ (we learn who we are seeking to please by who we are seeking to appease).

Paul is not preaching mans gospel but what has been revealed to him by God.

Paul recounts how violently he persecuted the Church (don’t be robbed by your reason for freedom.)

Paul tells us he has been crucified with Christ.

(He now has a new identity, a transfer of old habits in his life for new ones.)

Faith is never something you leave behind.

Your faith is being perfected by the same faith you had the day you believed, we must return daily to the foot of the cross.

*The Gospel preached by Paul is not man’s gospel by revelation of God

*Paul tells us he has been crucified with Christ.

(He has a new identity, a transfer of habits in his life.

*

*Paul tells us he has been crucified with Christ.

(He has a new identity, a transfer of habits in his life.

*Last week we learned that faith is never something that you leave behind.

We hear with faith and are being perfected by that same faith day after day as we return to the foot of the Cross of Christ.

Christ Transcends the Law of Moses

I often compare the role of the law in history to the role typewriters have played in the development of word processing.

The technology and idea of a typewriter was eventually developed into an electronic, faster, and far more complex computer that does word processing.

But when typing on a computer, we realize that we are still using the old manual typewriter's technology.

Further, we realize that the computer far transcends the typewriter.

Everything that a typewriter wanted to be when it was a little boy (and more!) is now found in the computer.

This compares to the law.

Everything the law wanted to be when it was young (as revealed to Moses) is found now in Christ and in the life of the Spirit.

Thus, when a Christian lives in the Spirit and under Christ, that Christian is not living contrary to the law, but is living in transcendence of the law.

It is for this very reason that life lived primarily under the law is wrong.

When the computer age arrived, we put away our manual typewriters because they belonged to the former era.

Paul's critique of the Judaizers is that they are typing on manual typewriters after computers are on the desk!

He calls them to put the manual typewriters away.

But in putting them away, we do not destroy them.

We fulfill them by typing on the computers.

Every maneuver on a computer is the final hope of the manual typewriter.

"Now that faith/Christ has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law" but not because the law is contrary to the promises; rather, it is because the law is fulfilled in Christ and the Spirit in a manner similar to the way a typewriter is fulfilled in the technology of a computer.

And I am profoundly thankful for both!

BIG IDEA: You must go to Moses to be condemned before you can come to Christ and call him friend.

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Even when you are not faithful God is always faithful

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The promise reminds us of Gods unchanging trustworthiness.

Galatians 3:15-18

We live in a culture today where promises seem flimsy at best, we have been promised anything and everything only to be let down and deceived.

Are you all in on the Promises of God?

The passage we read today mentions the promises of God 8 times.

v.16 “Now the promises were made to Abraham and his offspring.

it does not say, And to offsprings.”

Paul gives a human comparison between a manmade covenant and the covenant God made with Abraham.

Every moment of every day is an opportunity to declare our abiding faith in God and his promises.

Each day is filled with any number of tough choices that we have to make that demonstrate if we are believing God or not.

Sin is, at its core, exchanging the truth of God for a lie ().

This is another way of saying disbelieving God’s promises and believing a lie.

Are you all in on God’s promises?

Romans 1:25

25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,

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a.

He is absolutely trustworthy

He is absolutely trustworthy

“God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.

Has He said, and will he not do it?

Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it.

“In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.”

The dispute in Galatian (and it is still a dispute today) was over the basic matter of how sinners come to be accepted by God as righteous.

According to this passage, the question was settled a long time ago before the law even existed.

But how do I know that this is the only way to be acceptable before God?

Genesis 15:7-21

When Abram asks God: “How can I know that I will gain possession” of the promised blessing (v 8), God tells him to get a cow, a goat, a ram, a dove and a pigeon.

Abram knows what to do with them—he “cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other” (v 10).

This seems strange to us, but in Abram’s day this was the way a covenant was “signed”.

Each covenant-maker would pass between the halves of the animals.

It was a (very!) graphic way of those entering a covenant saying: If I break this agreement, may I be cut up and cut off: I will deserve to die just like these animals did.

What’s astonishing in the covenant between God and Abram is that Abram never walks between the halves!

“Abram fell into a deep sleep” (v 12).

The only thing that passes through is “a smoking firepot with a blazing torch [which] appeared and passed between the pieces” (v 17).

What is this strange fire?

It’s God—“on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram” (v 18).

The promise by God to Abram is a covenantal promise.

And it is a covenant that relies in no way on Abraham and his ability or power, it was initiated by God, for God, and through God.

God’s trustworthiness is in no way contingent on you, just as it was not contingent on Abraham even if he had been awake during the whole process.

Paul gives the illustration of a man-made covenant, that no one can add to it once it has been sealed or ratified.

Notice Paul points out that the promise was made to Abraham’s offspring which is Christ.

The saying is trustworthy, for:

   if we have died with him, we will also live with him;

   if we endure, we will also reign with him;

   if we deny him, he also will deny us;

   if we are faithless, he remains faithful —

for he cannot deny himself.

()

*if we have died with him (identified with Christs death, burial and resurrection )

*If we endure we will reign (don’t walk away from Jesus to avoid suffering)

*If we deny Him, he will deny you (if you bail on Jesus, he will renounce you on the last day.

I don’t even know you.

You weren’t mine.

You weren’t ever mine.”)

*If we are faithless, he remains faithful

(God supremely values his trustworthiness.

If you blackball his trustworthiness by saying, “I’m not going to trust him anymore.

I’m going to trust money.

I’m going a new way.

I’m done with that stuff, that old Christian stuff,” if you stay there, he’s faithful to the worth of his name, to the worth of his trustworthiness.

And the way God vindicates his trustworthiness to those who will not have it is called hell.

He has the power to fulfill His promises

“so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

21” fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”