Worthy Is He Who Calls

Manuscript Galatians 3:1-14

Intro- God’s Pursuit of His People, Not God’s People in Pursuit of Him

There is a somewhat difficult truth as you begin to dive into God’s word and learn more about God’s nature on one hand, and the nature of man on the other. You see, mankind began their relationship with God well, in the Garden of Eden in perfect relationship with the Creator of All Things. However, as we know, Adam and Eve disobeyed God, bringing sin into the world and worse than that, breaking the fellowship of all human beings with God.

This carried with it multiple consequences. The first is that because of our sin, we are due the just punishment that accompanies it, which is hell. Now the second consequence is one that many people, including many Christians, are unaware of. This consequence is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans in chapter 3. As Paul is explaining to the Romans that all people are sinful, he quotes from the Psalms in verses 10-11 and says this, “As it is written: None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; (and here is the truth that is often not taught or is simply ignored), no one seeks after God.”

No one seeks after God. There is no one who has ever lived who sought out to know the one true God. That is why the term seeker sensitive church, a church that wants to cater to unbelievers who may be seeking God, is nearly non-sensical because it assumes that there are individuals out there who do seek after God. But the witness of Scripture is clear, there is no one who seeks after God. Now, you may be thinking, “What of those of other religions around the world, who have not heard of Christianity perhaps, but who have a sense that there is something greater than themselves so they attempt to worship God in their own way?” What about them? Aren’t they seeking after God? The short answer is no, they are not. They are searching after idols. They are searching after a little “g” god, that is craftable, moldable, a deity that they are able to contort and twist a manipulate to fit the desires of their own heart.

The natural state of human beings is not as seekers of God, but as haters of God. John 15:18, “If the world hates you, (Jesus speaking with his disciples) know that it hated me before it hated you.” Left to our devices, we would continue in our hatred of God. We would never choose to turn from the of darkness of sin to the light of God. Our eyes were used to being blinded by our sin, forever in the darkness created by our inequities. To the sinners eyes, the light of God burns because it reveals to us that we are unclean and guilty before God, and the sinner hates Him for that. And so we do not, of our own free will, walk toward the light of God, but go deeper in the dark caverns of our sin.

But here is the good news. The Bible is not a story about man’s pursuit of God. Let me say that again, the Bible is not a story about man’s pursuit of God. The Bible, friends, is a story of God’s pursuit of His people. The Bible is a story of God’s pursuit of His people.

And that is what Galatians is all about, reminding the church that it was not their good deeds that brought them to God, but God taking the initiative to save a rebellious people from their sin, bringing them to Himself. And in Galatians 3 Paul moves away from telling of his own experiences with the apostles, to once again address the Galatians directly. And as we move throughout passage today, from verse 1 to 14, we are going to see three things. One, we will see that God alone is the originator of salvation. Secondly, we will see how from the very beginning, to the earliest chapters of the Bible and human history, it was always God’s plan to save all of His people, and finally, we are going to see how God’s people are now called to live.

First, let us pray

Thank you for the day

Thank you for the word by which we come to know you more

Teach us by Your Holy Spirit

The Spirit Gives Faith, The Spirit Finishes Faith

Read again with me verses 1-5: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? …”

You have to laugh at the way this chapter begins, “Oh foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” It begins in a very Pauline fashion. He is not afraid to mince words. He is not afraid to speak truth to those he loves to try to snap them back from the falsehoods they have been duped into believing. One commentator that I read said that you could easily read, “Oh you stupid Galations, how could you be so dumb?” That is a little harsh but that is essentially what Paul is saying. He is shocked, he can’t believe that they have, as we remember from previous chapters, taken the truth of justification by faith alone, which is the gospel, and allowed themselves to be bewitched, to be tricked, to be taken over by the false gospel of justification by faith plus the works of the OT law. And just to remind us, the doctrine of justification is the act by which someone who is unjust because they have broken the law of God, is made just in the sight of God. And we learned in previous from Galatians, that justification can only come through faith in Jesus, because He is the only one who has ever kept perfectly the law of God. And upon faith, the righteousness of Christ is credited to us! There is a transaction that happened on the cross, whereby Jesus took our sins, and we were credited His righteousness. We did nothing. Galatians did nothing.

And it is not as if the Galatians misheard Paul when he first came to them to preach the gospel. He says in verse 1, that, “It was before your very eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified!” Now, what does publicly portrayed mean? Because Jesus was not crucified in Galatia, He was crucified in Jerusalem. So what does it mean that he was publicly portrayed to them?

The word here that is translated “portrayed” is the Grk word that means something like a public notice. So what Paul means is that when he went to the Galatians, he preached the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, in all of its’ horrendous and brutal details. He told them of the whipping, of the mocking, of His flesh being torn, ripped, and pierced, and he did so in a way that it was as if the Galatians were their to see it with their own eyes.

John Calvin, and many of the other Reformers, did not like icons in their churches. They did not crucifixes, pictures of Paul, or of Mary or any other image to be found within the halls of their churches. The reason for this is because the Roman Catholic Church infused mystical powers within those icons. Many believed that if you were to touch them, to be near them, to be around them, you would extra portions of grace. It quickly became idolatrous. The icons that were supposed to point to God, became a god and were worshiped. So said this, “Let those who want to do the ministry of the gospel rightly, learn not to simply speak and proclaim but also to penetrate into the consciences, so that many men may see Christ crucified and that His blood may flow. When the church has such painters as these she no longer needs wood and stone, that is, dead images, she no longer requires any pictures.”

What Calvin is saying is that we need preachers, we need Christians, we need the church to be filled with people who preach like Paul, who proclaimed the gospel with such an intensity, with no gruesome detail spared, no moment of agony left out. We need Christians who preach the gospel like that, who proclaim the gospel so that the people they are talking to will be transported to the foot of the cross, as if they are really there watching the Spotless Lamb of God be slain for the sins of those who believe.

That is how Paul preached. He erected a giant billboard with the bloody crucifixion, portrayed clearly for the Galatians to see. But, as Phillip Ryken says, false teachers came along and wrote graffiti on the billboard, and the Galatians became unwilling to accept justification through Christ alone, wanting to add their own finishing touches to t he work of Jesus. Those foolish Galatians.

Paul’s Appeal to the Experiences of Galatians

So in the previous chapter, Paul defended his apostolic authority and the gospel by appealing to his own testimony. Now, to bring back the Galatians to the truth, THE truth, the only religious truth that exists, Paul points the Galatians back to their own experiences, specifically their experiences with the Holy Spirit.

Now Paul here brings in a theological truth that he has not yet mentioned in the book of Galatians, and that is the indwelling and the work of the Holy Spirit in every believer. You see when Jesus was still in the middle of His earthly ministry on earth, He says in John 16:7-15, that it is good that He goes away, because upon the resurrection and ascension of Jesus in Acts 1, God the Holy Spirit came to indwell in all believers. So when you put your faith in Jesus, God the Spirit indwells in you, and it is He that communicates, that transfers all of the benefits of Christ to you. We will look at the in more detail in Galatians 5. Main thing you need to know now is that when you become a believer and place your faith in Jesus, you are indwelled with God the Spirit.

So, to wake the Galatians from the bewitchment, their stupor, he asks several rapid fire questions to the Galatians about their experience with the Holy Spirit: Read Galatians 3:2

How is it, people of the church of Galatia, that you came about receving the Holy Spirit? Was it by your works, your good deeds? Did you impress God with your law keeping? No, the Galatians knew they received the Holy Spirit through hearing the gospel that was preached to them by Paul, and believing it, putting their trust in the hope of Jesus.

But as a quick aside, remember, the story of the Bible is not a story of how man pursued God, but how God pursued man. What I mean by this the in the context of this verse is that the Galatians, that we, do intrinsically have faith inside of us, waiting to be placed in Jesus. We can not and do muster faith up in us that we choose to place in Jesus or not to place in Jesus. To help explain what I mean, take a look at Ephesians 2:8-9 with me, 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. The very faith that grants us the Holy Spirit does not originate in us. Faith in Jesus is gifted to us by the God. This means that there is literally nothing we can do to save ourselves. We cannot even rely on ourselves to create faith in ourseves to place in Jesus. And the natural person does not want to! The natural person hates Him! But despite that, the good God of the universe, pursues us, even when we did not want Him. And and He gifts us the faith that we cannot muster inside of ourselves, and He gives the Holy Spirit through that faith, He gives us justification. We can not boast in anything, no work, no power no wisdom. We can only boast in Jesus Christ.

Paul continues with his rapid fire questions to the Galatians in 3:3- Paul, knowing that the Galatians would be forced to recognize that their whole Christian life, faith and all, was by the Spirit, he asks them a question that should be obvious, that is, “If you began by the Spirit, do you think your sanctification, that your Christ-likeness, that your relationship with the God, will be completed by your flesh, meaning by the works of your hands, by your works, by your good deeds?”

The clear answer is no. Not only are we saved, justified by the power of the Holy Spirit giving to us the benefits of faith in Jesus Christ, but it is through Him alone that we are sanctified. Our sanctification comes through the power of the Holy Spirit. Did you know, Christian, that you can the read the Bible, you can even pray, and you can even share the gospel with somebody, and it not do anything to grow you further into the image of Christ, which is what sanctification is? Did you know that?

That is what the Judaizers did and that is what the Galatians began to do. They prayed, they read their OT, they did all the Christians and then some, but they did devoid of the Spirit. They did the works believing that it was the work itself that sanctified them, that perfected their faith and brought them closer to God. And I know that we have talked about this before, but brothers and sisters, we quickly fall into the same rhythm of beliefs as the Galatians. When we read our Bible, or pray, even when we go to church and Bible study and serve the needy, and we do so because it is a religious checklist that we think we must do to make sure that we will get our ticket to heaven, we have fallen same legalistic trap as the Galatians. Because if that is our motive when we do those things, that are good things by the way, we are doing them in the power of the Holy Spirit.

You see read our Bible’s, pray and all the rest out of a longing for relationship with our God, and with a reliance on the Holy Spirit to use those to draw us closer to Himself, then we will be sanctified! We will grow in our Christ-likeness and we will grow in our relationship with God.

Let me try to illustrate this for you in a somewhat strange way. Do you remember the song “Cats in the Cradle”? It goes, “And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man in the moon "When you coming home, dad?" "I don't know when" But we'll get together then. You know we'll have a good time then”

It must be on top 10 list of most depressing songs ever written. (Explain song)

It is an awful song, it is depressing beyond belief, but friends this is how we often view our relationship with God. The Lord is pursuing a relationship with you! He wants to spend time, He wants talk with you, He wants to you learn about His wonders and His love, He wants you to experience the joy that comes from resting in His presence! But when we pursue to take our sanctification, our own spiritual growth into our own hands, and we turn these good things of Bible reading, of prayer and Sunday worship, into a religious checklist that we must keep in order to stay saved or stay in the good graces of God, turning our back on relationship with God, telling Him we have too many things to do. Maybe we can enjoy Him when our checklist is done.

Friends, don’t be that way, do not believe that these good things, in and of themselves sanctify you apart from the Holy Spirit, apart from relationship with God. It is not your works by which you are perfect, by which you come into the likeness of Christ. It is through the Holy Spirit drawing you into deeper relationship with your Savior.

Paul asks the Galatians in verse 4, “Did you suffer so many things in vain- if indeed it was in vain?” The word suffer can also mean experience, so Paul is asking, “Did you experience all of things, did you have all of these experiences with the Holy Spirit, in vain? Did you experience all of the blessings of the Holy Spirit, to simply take away the freedom and the simplicity of justification and sacntification through faith alone by the power of the Holy Spirit, to put back on the demands and the consequences of the law?

And in verse 5 he finishes his series of rapid fire, rhetorical questions by asking a question that is similar to the others, “Did He who supplies the Holy Spirit to you and works miracles among you, do so by the works of the law? Or by hearing with faith?”

Just as the Galatians knew deep the answer to this question, so do we.

Conclusion

We know that our only hope in this life is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That is the only pathway to heaven, more importantly pathway to God! And whats more, we know that all of this gifted to us by a God who pursues His people, who leaves the 99 to go after the one! Who chose to go into a world that hated Him, to wipe off the spit that we put on His face, to turn his cheek when slapped Him, to take the blood that poured out Him of due to our sins and use it to cover the doorpost of our hearts so that the wrath of God would pass over us and slam into Him on the cross. And we are tempted time and time again to make this story about us to make our Christian life about us and about our ability and about our power and our works to pursue God. And we forget, Oh foolish us, our earliest experiences of our Christian life. We were met face to face with our sin, and we knew we couldn’t save ourselves. So we believed in the One who could save us. And we were given the Holy Spirit. Pray and ask God to remind you of those sweet early days of your Christian walk, where the simple of goodness of God overtook you, and you basked in the glory of forgiveness that came to you by hearing the gospel with faith.