Free in Christ

Mountains

The joy of living in the mountains

Sitting on top of the mountain

Dangers of staying too long on the mountain

Paul is going to take us up three mountains - Promises and faith of Abraham : The Mosaic Law : The mountain point to Jesus Christ.

Paul spent the last chapter in his letter introducing us to the doctrine or teaching of justification by faith. Now as we get to chapter 3 Paul is going to lay out a case to defend it.

Galatians 3:1-9 -

Paul peppers his audience with six rapid fire questions in the first five verses of this text.

Who cast a spell on you, before whose eyes was Christ publically portrayed as crucified?

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

Are you so foolish?

After beginning by the Spirit, are you now finishing by the flesh?

Did you experience so much for nothing - if in fact it was for nothing?

Does God give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law?

Are you really going to throw away the truth that you put your faith, in that you have experienced? Did you earn salvation on your own? No, of course not. So why in the world would you throw that all away to try and walk in works of salvation now?

Charles Blondin the tight-rope walker. He lived over a 100 years ago.

“Look this is all very good but I don’t trust you any more. I’m going to go ahead and just do the rest by myself. How about you let me down and I will walk from here without you.”

Questions and chastising he would have received both from Blondin as well as the rest of the audience. Are you out of your mind???

This is the reaction of Paul to his friends in Galatia. Why are you being so foolish? Paul is asking them have you lost the power to think straight?

Galatians 3:1 - “who publically portrayed Jesus Christ crucified to you.”

Was it the ones who seem to be casting a spell on you. No.

When I was with you telling you the wonders of grace I literally painted a picture of the cross right in front of you.

I laid it all out for all to see so clearly, but now you are slipping because of this secondary message by a group who really doesn’t have your best interest in mind.

When we started this series we actually went to the end of the letter as an introduction.

Judiazers saw the pressure and were feeling the pressure from the authorities and they were looking to make their situation comfortable. For them to be more comfortable they are going to weigh you down.

Paul says that they cast a spell on you. They used magic on you. What magic is is the ability to fool your audience. To draw their attention away from what is real by engaging them in an illusion.

All of the probing questions that Paul is going to ask them right in the first couple of verses are summed up by the one question.

“Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

Which leads Paul back to a man named Abraham who the scriptures say was justified by faith.

Side not Abraham was circumcised.

Abraham’s Story - Abraham was a pagan called out by God.

Genesis 12 - “The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him...”

Right off the bat we see that it’s only by grace alone that God is going to bless his people.

Abraham received some great promises from God.

In fact they are promises that only God can fulfill because Abraham is not a young man and his wife is not a spring chicken herself.

Land for your people

Make a great people through you

Abraham has to cock his head a little bit and wonder how in the world is this going to happen.

I’m old, my wife is old, we are really past our prime childbearing years, and we don’t have children now.

How in the world is that going to happen?

It’s going to happen because of God. And Paul says in

Galatians 3:6 - “just like Abraham who believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.”

Abraham’s righteousness came because he chose to believe God and follow God.

Abraham heard the radical promises of God and in turn he lived a life of radical obedience.

He got up and left his family home and headed off into the wilderness.

I’m sure to some people, maybe a lot of people, that decision seemed very foolish, very reckless.

Abraham’s righteousness came because he believed someone. He believed God.

What about that statement you made about Abraham being the first person that God commanded to be circumcised.

Doesn’t that prove that the commands of the law hold 100% even to today?

If you go back through Abraham’s story you find that God’s covenant with him comes long before the command to get circumcised.

Genesis 15 God solidifies his covenant with Abraham in a very unique way.

Back in that day if you were going to covenant with someone, basically your setting up a legally binding promise with someone, what you would do is get some animals and cut them in half and place each half on the ground sort of forming a path.

Try doing that in a court of law today!

Imagine the judge bringing in livestock to fill the court room and he tells the participating parties to cut them all up and lay them on the court room floor.

Both parties in the agreement would then walk together between the cut up animals signifying that you were both in full agreement and that this deal was binding. There would be punishments or consequences for either party that broke their end of the bargain.

Basically think a very intense pinky swear. You break this pinky swear and it could mean death.

God tells Abraham to bring the covenant animals and set them up so that they can enter into this legally binding agreement. But what happens next is unique.

It’s a picture of this free grace that God is offering to his people.

I am going to make you a nation,

I’m going to give you the land,

I’m going to make you prosper.

And there ain’t nothing you can do to earn it.

Then two chapters later in Genesis God calls Abraham to be circumcised.

Paul addresses this issue of Abraham’s righteousness to his circumcision in

Romans 4:9-12 - “Is this blessing only for the circumcised, then? Or is it also for the uncircumcised? For we say, Faith was credited to Abraham for righteousness. In what way, then, was it credited—while he was circumcised, or uncircumcised? It was not while he was circumcised, but uncircumcised. And he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while still uncircumcised. This was to make him the father of all who believe but are not circumcised, so that righteousness may be credited to them also. And he became the father of the circumcised, who are not only circumcised but who also follow in the footsteps of the faith our father Abraham had while he was still uncircumcised.”

Abraham walked in obedience as a response to the righteousness that he experienced because he placed his faith in God.

Hebrews 11 is another place where we see clearly this idea of faith over works in gaining righteousness before God. By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith is the continual pattern that we see as the author is listing off the Old Testament Saints who went before us.

Abraham simply believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

In the same way, Paul says, Galatians 3:7-9 - “You know, then, that those who have faith, these are Abraham’s sons. Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you. Consequently those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith.”

Do you remember that old children’s song titled Father Abraham? “Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you. So let’s all praise the Lord!”

Abraham was blessed because of his faith.

We are blessed as well right along with Abraham because we have put our faith in Jesus Christ.

Abraham didn’t know the name of his Savior, Jesus Christ, but he was looking forward to the promised Messiah who would take away the sins of the world.

He was God’s child because of his faith and we are God’s children as well because of faith.

We are going to talk about the Mosaic Law next week and doing what’s right or what you might call living a holy life.

I said that there are beauties as well as dangers with staying on a mountain too long.

One of the dangers is staying on Abraham’s mountain and not caring about how we live our lives or what we do.

It really doesn’t matter anyway because we are already saved by faith. Right!

This is a mountain of super spirituality that we can get caught up in and it neglects the reality that is all around us.

The reality is that we are in a moving, changing, living, and sinful world.

Every follower of Jesus from the beginning of time has had to navigate that.

What we see in Abraham is radical faith that results in radical obedience.

He moved away from his families home to wander in the wilderness to start a new family.

Nobody does that back then, unless you were kicked out of your house. Family and family ties were everything. Abraham gives up the family ties so that he can experience his new family blessings through the Lord. Abraham then goes so far as to offer a sacrifice of his own heir, the one whom God gave them to start their great nation. How does that make sense?

God’s radical promises of grace and righteousness led to Abraham’s radical obedience.

I’ve known some people who set themselves on this mountain and don’t ever come down. They are looking for that super spiritual high. I knew a man once, a long time ago, who bragged that he spend over 8hrs a day reading and meditating on God’s word in his easy chair. He was basking in the grace that God had shown him. But the man had no job, basically made his wife work to keep the house afloat. I’m not so sure that this man understood what it meant to actually live a life based on the grace that he had been shown.

The truth is if we are not living in radical obedience then maybe we need to evaluate how we are experiencing God’s radical grace.

Does it have a hold on our heart?

And I’m not talking about being reckless, or careless. Radical obedience isn’t about being foolish, though there might be some occasion where God called you to do something that just doesn’t make sense. Radical obedience, as a result of our radical gift from Jesus, looks like the One Another’s we see in Scripture.

Love one another,

care for one another,

look out for one another more than ourselves,

be humble with one another,

be forgiving to one another,

be patient with one another,

give for one another.

Simple acts with a powerful impact

When we live this way of life OFTEN times, maybe even most times, that will look radical to a world that can only look to itself.

Because of this hyper-individual American culture we live in one of the radical areas of obedience might look like being the first in line to give up some of our freedoms.

It might be wearing one of these things right now.

a mask doesn’t have to mean fear,

it might just mean love for that person next door or the one walking down the street,

or love for the shop owner who just wants to keep their business open.

Abraham displayed radical obedience in light of the radical grace he was given.

Let’s not get stuck on the hill of complacency basking in the righteousness we have be given but forsaking the continual transformation that awaits.

So why the law. If faith is all we need, why the law? We are going to tackle that question next Sunday.

This week we want to mediate on the radical grace that we have experienced.

Go back, this week, and reread the story of Abraham in the Book of Genesis and take a peak at the experience he had with God that led to radical living.

May we all seek after the Holy Spirit to give us that same determination to live in radical faith. Not out of a salvation by my works kind of mindset, but as a response to have Jesus Christ has so lavishly shown his love to us!