Progressing in Progress

FCF: We may be too passive about our progress.

Main Idea:

Passivity prevents progress

AQ

How do we know if we are passive or not?

We are able to identify the why and how of impeded progress (7-9)

Why? (7)

They were settling for less than joyful obedience

Running refers to progressing or developing positively

They were, after professing faith in Christ, progressing in the faith well. That is,their progress in the faith was going in a good direction. Pal was pleased because he believed that God was at work and was being honored through their obedience.

This kind of obedience is not mere conformity. It is not reluctant or lazy progress.

Joyful obedience as a descriptor of running well is captured by the author of Hebrews:

Hebrews 12:1–2 ESV

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We see the same word, run from our text in Gal. here in Heb. 12:1. And it is clear that our running, that is to say, our living obediently to God is challenging. It includes casting aside all that could hinder our running (our living for God). This is hard and grueling work. But notice how our efforts to live this kind of challenging but good life is described: looking to Jesus. We look to Jesus as we strive to live for Him in this world. We don’t look to the world for encouragement. We look to Christ.

And what does the author of Hebrews say about Jesus? His obedience on earth certainly included hardship: he endured the cross, despising the shame, but notice what it says in v. : who for the joy that was set before Him. Joy and hardship both comprised obedience.

For the Galatians to have been running well would mean they were striving with hardship and against sin and anything else that could hinder their progress in the faith. But it also means doing it all with joy. Why joy? Because we enjoy the hardship? No. We have joy in running because as we look to Jesus, we know that Jesus:

endured the cross and paid the penalty of our sin

he took the shame of our sin

He rose from the dead and

He’s reigning over us from the right hand of the Father

Yes, our running is difficult but we have an abundance of reason to have joy in it all.

And the Galatians started off this way, but somewhere along the line they began to settle for less than joyful obedience. They apparently became passive about their running and as a result became vulnerable.

This is the why of impeded progress

But how does it happen? For the Galatians, they became passive and as a result, vulnerable and that’s when they were hindered by the false teachers from obeying the truth. So let’s consider the how of impeded progress

How (8-9)

persuasion is a unique word in the NT. It appears only here. It’s flattery and cunning. It’s eloquent manipulation.

The false teachers, as we have noted here several times throughout this series, to the Galatians the false teachers were not obviously false.

They knew they were teaching something that contradicted Paul’s teaching. They knew that the people of the Galatian churches had come to love Paul. Had come to love the gospel and love Jesus. So they needed to persuade the church to believe their message with, I suppose, a careful combination of flattery and eloquence and polite disagreement and charisma.

But notice what Paul makes clear about the Judaizers’ efforts: it’s not from Him who calls you. This is a common way for Paul to refer to God… the one who calls you.

He referred to God this way in 1:6: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you.

And we need to be careful what we attribute to God. We need to guard against a pragmatic view of God and what He does and does not do in the world and in our lives. The Galatians perhaps thought that in light of how persuasive the Judaizers were, they might have thought their teaching reflected what God says. Do we understand that just because someone may sound impressive or be impressive, at least according to our own standards, that does not mean that what they are saying or doing is the truth.

Just think about one of the key characteristics, in the key quality of Satan himself: deception. People are deceived because the efforts to deceive are impressive… those efforts are effective.

So when you are are struggling. When we are enduring hardship. When we are desperate for God to move in a particular way in our lives, and nothing seems to be happening. That is often when an effort to deceive us comes our way. We are vulnerable in those moments, so when we hear something that sounds good, and is close to what we want, we may be tempted to believe it.

But we also need to recognize that not only does the how of how of impeded progress utilize eloquent manipulation it also come by subtle corruption

Notice verse 9: A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Now when it comes to leaven, the Jewish people celebrated a feast once a year in which they ate unleavened bread. Passover. The feast that celebrates God’s sparing of His people in Egypt. Everyone who was in their homes while God’s judgement was being poured out on the Egyptians for not freeing the Jewish people from bondage were spared. But what was distinct about their homes? The blood of the lamb. The blood was the marker for the judgement to pass over them. It’s not that God did not know what homes His people were in, but His instructions to Moses and his people was to put the blood of a sacrificial lamb on their door posts so they would be spared from death.

And Paul’s point is that the teaching of the Judaizers, which was essentially legalism, had no more right to be among the Galatian church that did leaven had to be in a Jewish household on Passover Eve.

But just a little leaven, just a little corruption leavens or corrupts the whole thing. We need to be concerned for purity. Pure doctrine. Pure theology. Pure gospel. But in order to guard against this subtle corruption, we need to know the truth well.

And this may have been more where the Galatians were, we are also susceptible to this eloquent manipulation and subtle corruption when we are not firmly grounded in the truth. When our understanding of the Bible is rudimentary, that is, limited and basic, our ability to detect eloquent false teaching will be limited.

So as much as anything, our consideration of the why and how of impeded progress and determining if we are being passive about our spiritual growth which is our sanctification, it is a call to be serious students of the Bible. You know what will be true until we die or Jesus comes back. We will be busy. There will always be reasons why we cannot or do not have the time to devote to studying the Bible and meditating on the Bible. Here, we have in addition to Sunday morning worship service, Sunday School at 9:30 AM on Sundays, ladies bible study on Tuesday mornings, Life Groups on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month, quarterly men’s breakfasts and we are aiming to restart men’s Bible studies on Saturday mornings again. We have a ministry to students on Sunday nights twice a month. We have children’s church on Sunday mornings. And my point in outlining all of that is not to suggest that we all should be involved in everything, but we do have opportunities to learn and grow together. Priorities. What we do with our time. What’s important to us.

We cannot be passive about our sanctification. About our progress. Passivity prevents progress.

How do we know if we are passive or not?

We possess the traits of progress (10-12)

So we move from what impedes progress to what is necessary to pursue it.

Confidence in God and His promises (10)

My initial reading of this left me a little confused. I think when you and I read something like verse 10 or hear someone expressing the same sentiments in conversation, we have a general affirming response. in other words, we like to have confidence in good outcomes. When we’re wondering if someone will make the right decision or a certain outcome will come to pass, when we hear someone express confidence that it will happen the way we want, we at least want to believe it.

But I want us to see that Paul’s confidence was not in the Galatians. He was quite discouraged and frustrated and bewildered because of how the Galatians were behaving and what they were entertaining to be true.

But notice what v. 10 says: I have confidence in the Lord. Paul’s confidence was not in the people. The Galatians were not going to take the right view because they were obviously able to discern truth and lies but because God is faithful to His promises.

Do we have confidence in God’s promises? How much of our lives do we spend wondering and worrying about whether or not God’s promises will come to pass? What do we know in light of God’s promises:

He will never leave us or forsake us. But the difficulties of our lives can leave wondering if God really knows and really cares.

God is good and sovereign

And Paul used Gospel logic and not human logic. Human logic would have lead him to conclude that there is no good reason to believe that the Galatians would come around because they have clearly gone too far into the corrupt gospel. Either they are lost or they were never found.

But Gospel logic says

Philippians 1:6 ESV

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

If the Galatians have believed the gospel, and Paul believes they have, then they will be preserved by God. They will repent. They will take the right view. They will eliminate the false teaching from their midst. Not because the Galatians are string and wise but because God is.

And Paul’s confidence in God not only lead him to conclude that the Galatians would land where they needed to be but that the false teachers, and their teaching, would be removed: the one who is troubling you will bear the penalty, whoever he is. Justice will be served by God. Again, all of this is a confidence in God and His promises.

We need an unshakable confidence, not in ourselves and not in each other, but in God and his promises.

Another trait of progress is a

Commitment to theological purity (11)

What Paul discusses in v. 11 seems somewhat detached from the immediate context. To be sure, Paul has been talking about circumcision, but the idea that he was preaching it was not a concern until this verse. Apparently, the accusation (the lie) was floating about that even Paul was preaching that circumcision was still necessary for one to be justified.

On what basis would such an accusation even be issued?

Before Paul became an apostle

His own circumcision

Timothy’s circumcision

As we noted last week, here in 5:6, Paul makes it clear that circumcision or uncircumcision is not the issue. It’s the doctrine of justification.

But Paul denies this lie about him and asks the rhetorical question we see in v. 11: why am i still being persecuted? Paul was preaching a law-free gospel, and that invited persecution from others. People hated what he was preaching. People imprisoned him for what he was preaching. People wanted to kill him for what he was preaching. He was killed for what he preached.

If he had been preaching law and grace (circumcision and grace), he would not have been persecuted. People, at least the Judaizers, would not have had a problem with his teaching.

And the same people who could not stand a gospel that did not require adherence to the law also found the teaching the the Messiah was crucified intolerable. The cross represented shame. There was no symbol of greater shame than the cross. Those who were crucified were the lowest of low. And the idea the the Messiah would have been subjected to a cross was despicable in their eyes.

And because of this belief among the Judaizers, Paul declares his commitment to the offense of the cross. If people are offended by the cross, so be it. The shame is in the sin of people. The shame of our sin is the offense. Sin being in the presence of a holy God is what is offensive. But Christ bore our shame and our guilt on the cross. This is the true good news. There was no other way for the sin of people to be solved.

We proclaim Christ and Him crucified. To some that will be good news and to others it will be offensive. The gospel is offensive to some. We talk about sin and guilt and our need to be forgiven and not being able to do anything about it ourselves an about needing a Savior and that there is only one Savior and only one way. This is all offensive to people, but it is also true.

Paul was emphasizing the need for theological purity here. He was being persecuted for it. We need to know this church. The more gospel-centered we are, the stronger our commitment to theological purity, the more likely it will be that we will be persecuted by a world that hates the gospel and hates God.

It appears this will be felt more by the church here in the United States in the not so distant future.

A final trait of progress to note as we consider if we are passive or not is a

Condemnation of heresy (12)

What Paul wishes here is perhaps a little shocking. Clearly Paul is angry.

He refers to the false teachers as those who unsettle you. To unsettle means they were working to destabilize the Galatian church. They were being disruptive in the most disruptive way. And this disruption was not coming by persecution at this point. It was coming through eloquent manipulation. The destabilizing force here was not violence or even mockery. It was flattery. The real offense was messing with the gospel. This is what got Paul so angry.

He’s saying that if these Judaizers were going to make such a big deal about circumcision, and corrupt the gospel by doing so, then they better go the whole way themselves, and make eunuchs of themselves. He was done with them and the destructive manipulation thy were perpetrating against the church.

What we can take away here is the seriousness we should possess when it comes to gospel purity.

This is why we take membership here so seriously. We want to do all we can to make sure that everyone that identifies themselves with this local body is on the same theological page. There’s nothing more important. If you are not, you are still welcome here. We want anyone and everyone to come and join us on Sunday mornings. But when it comes to membership, theology and clarity on the gospel is essential. And that’s why we make membership a requirement for many of the positions of service in the church. All of this, though not always popular, is a way we can pursue the purity of the gospel in this local church.

We can’t be passive about progress

Conclusion

Passivity prevents progress

We need, therefore, what impedes progress and what traits are necessary for progress.